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Keywords: Palm Island

  • RELIGION

    I am pilgrim

    • Ann Rennie
    • 13 September 2024

    People visit graves and castles, libraries and mansions, battlefields and places of historical significance to feel a little of the lives of others, to pay homage, to make that human connection. We make secular pilgrimages to places that we have dreamt about or read in books or seen on screen. Wherever we go, these are ultimately visits to places within.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The moral conundrum of casting a vote on 2 July

    • Frank Brennan
    • 10 June 2016
    46 Comments

    Sadly, the major political parties have forfeited any claim to govern in their own right because they have caused such disillusionment among so many voters about other policy issues with strong moral overtones. Any voter impressed with Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si' or inspired by his visits to asylum seekers on the islands of Lampedusa and Lesbos could not blithely vote for either of the major parties, without first determining how to place some continuing political and moral pressure on them.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    The boat people from paradise lost

    • Lyn Bender
    • 23 April 2016
    7 Comments

    Ursula Rakova told how the sea that had been the friend of her people, was turning against them. It had crashed through and divided her island in two. Coconut palms were collapsing at the new shoreline. Food gardens were lost, as the soil was increasingly rendered infertile by salty tides that washed over them. The land that had been handed from grandmother to daughter, would bequeath no legacy to the granddaughters. The homeland of generations was disappearing before their eyes.

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  • RELIGION

    Brennan and Katter's Aboriginal pilgrimage

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 October 2012
    1 Comment

    'I had the pleasure of the company of Bob Katter at a series of meetings with Aboriginal Councillors before addressing a public meeting on Palm Island. Some say there has been little growth or change on these remote Aboriginal communities. In fact some of what we saw was unimaginable 30 years ago. 

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  • RELIGION

    Palm Island cops dodge justice again

    • Frank Brennan
    • 05 April 2011
    20 Comments

    Queensland's deputy police commissioner has said there is no need for disciplinary action against any Queensland police officer over the Palm Island death in custody case. Justice is beyond the reach of Queensland Aborigines, while the police remain a law unto themselves.

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  • RELIGION

    Letting Aboriginal Australians speak for themselves

    • Frank Brennan
    • 07 July 2010
    11 Comments

    Kevin Rudd stood in the forecourt of Parliament House Canberra and recalled with great emotion the morning on which he had welcomed the members of the Stolen Generations. There was no mistaking his sense of solidarity: he knew there and then what it was to be dispossessed, alienated and outcast.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    'Still angry' over Palm Island custody death

    • Pat Mullins
    • 04 July 2008
    4 Comments

    Jeff Waters relates the death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee on Palm Island and the acquittal of the police officer involved. Mulrunji's death reflects a nationwide context where cherished institutions of western democracy are unavailable to many Indigenous people.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Sentencing laws will further alienate indigenous Australians

    • Frank Quinlan
    • 16 October 2006
    3 Comments

    Just last week, the coroner’s report into the death in custody of Palm Island man Mulrunji, called for a major overhaul of how the justice system deals with indigenous Australians. Yet in the same week, a Senate Committee began looking into a Bill that will increase the potential for injustice in sentencing decisions affecting indigenous people, and other cultural minorities.

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