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Keywords: Navy

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Can Australian diplomacy temper Chinese bravado?

    • Jeremy Clarke
    • 13 May 2024

    The recent mid-air encounter between an Australian naval helicopter and a Chinese fighter jet over the Yellow Sea had the usual reactions, but ultimately failed to strain economic relations between the two states. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Tamils facing new atrocities in Sri Lanka

    • Paul White
    • 04 July 2014
    39 Comments

    On Monday we learned that two boats of Tamil asylum seekers had been intercepted off Christmas Island. Now there are unconfirmed reports that Australia is handing them over to the Sri Lankan navy without assessing their claims for protection. Amnesty warns Tamils face the risk of sexual violence, torture, murder, imprisonment, and enforced disappearance. Since March this year there have been scores of arrests and several deaths.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    As close as we ever came to the Navy

    • Brian Doyle
    • 02 July 2014
    2 Comments

    When I was young, I thought that men and women in the military were violent and foolish. Now I understand that they are braver than I was, brave enough to admit and acknowledge our ancient addiction, and in many cases do astounding things to bring it to an end; the most eloquent and articulate agents for peace I ever met are those who've been in wars, and the most strident agents for wanton butchery are those who never knew it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Toxic politics endure as Morrison gets nosy with the Navy

    • Ray Cassin
    • 19 February 2014
    22 Comments

    Scott Morrison is the first Immigration Minister to inspect ADF facilities. There has always been cooperation between the Defence Force and other government agencies, but Operation Sovereign Borders has radically changed the playing field. Indonesia's politicians might relish the irony of seeing in Australia an increasing interpenetration of military and civilian hierarchies — something that Australians used to see as a fault in Indonesia.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The war on asylum seekers

    • Justin Glyn
    • 22 January 2014
    32 Comments

    The current dispute with Indonesia over border incursions by the Australian Navy is symptomatic of a deeper problem — the militarisation of political discourse. Von Clausewitz famously claimed that 'war is politics by other means': in other words, that military force is employed in service of political ends. In Australia, as elsewhere in the West, this is being taken to an extreme not previously seen outside authoritarian societies.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Evil is relative in the hunt for bin Laden

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 31 January 2013
    5 Comments

    The tagline 'history's greatest manhunt for the world's most dangerous man' is ironic. By the time of bin Laden's execution his dangerousness was arguably largely emblematic. Zero Dark Thirty portrays the manhunt as a quest for revenge, and leaves open to question whether America was enhanced or diminished by exacting its vengeance.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Abbott's asylum seeker turn-back policy is a bad joke

    • Tony Kevin
    • 27 July 2012
    15 Comments

    Can Abbott and Morrison be serious about turning back the boats? Do they really want to expose the Navy to the fear, the rage, the encouragement to self-harm and lethal criminality, the emotional damage, the risks to Australian-Indonesian relations that have beset past turn-back policies?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Profound silence of a conscientious objector

    • Brian Doyle
    • 25 April 2012
    8 Comments

    I remember the day my older brother came back from the navy. He was 20. I was 11. He slouched in his chair, weary and dismissive and friendly. I wanted to say something amusing to make him see me but no words came. So I asked him if he wanted a sandwich. Sandwiches were a way of talking in our family.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The politicisation of defence

    • Michael McKernan
    • 30 March 2009
    3 Comments

    With typical irreverence we have taken some glee in the conflict between politicians and the military. Indeed in our history there has been tension, not to say a distrust, between the military and politicians in Australia.

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