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Keywords: Volunteering

  • EDUCATION

    Can religious freedom and education coexist?

    • Jacinta Collins
    • 20 August 2024

    As the discourse surrounding religious freedom in Australia becomes increasingly contentious, especially in the context of schooling, we must address the growing perception that holding religious beliefs and values — and making choices based on them — is somehow discriminatory or at odds with modern society. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Productivity Commission's magical thinking

    • Michael McVeigh
    • 25 July 2024

    While proposing broader access to tax deductibility for some charities, the Productivity Commission's new report on charitable giving suggests removing benefits for religious entities. This raises serious questions about the role of religion in fostering charitable giving and the potential consequences of these reforms for Australia's charitable landscape.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    An old problem, a new conversation

    • David Halliday
    • 06 May 2024

    The national conversation is very much spotlighting domestic violence and violence towards women. As a nation, we need to consider hard questions around the abundant factors within our society with connections to violence. Over three decades, we have made gains, but there’s more work to be done.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The inheritance of Anzac Day

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 16 April 2024

    Anzac Day draws us away from the geopolitical chess board to consider the price that so many persons have paid for the wars in which their leaders join. It reminds us of the need for diplomacy based on respect for the humanity of persons on all sides of conflict. 

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Americans look after each other because their government won't

    • Sarah Klenbort
    • 03 April 2024
    3 Comments

    Americans, facing high healthcare costs, frequently resort to crowdfunding for essential treatments, highlighting a reliance on volunteerism to fill government gaps. Meanwhile, Australians, benefiting from a higher tax-funded safety net, donate less to charity. So how do differing approaches to social welfare influence the spirit of community and generosity?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The changing face of Australian homelessness

    • Danusia Kaska
    • 08 March 2023
    3 Comments

    Women over 55 are the fastest growing homeless group in Australia. With over 400,000 women at risk of homelessness, it's Indigenous women, women with disabilities, women from migrant or refugee backgrounds, and women with mental illness who are disproportionately vulnerable.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Christmas in the face of uncertainty

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 December 2022
    4 Comments

    In 1939, King George VI gave an encouraging Christmas address, speaking after the Declaration of War on the Nazis. The future was uncertain, with no assurance of survival. In Australia we do not face the same immediate threat, but we do share the same uncertainty.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    #Kindness

    • Cherie Gilmour
    • 02 August 2022
    6 Comments

    We all know the Internet can be a seething cesspool of vitriol, so the presence of heart-warming videos of people slipping $20 into someone’s coat pocket or randomly complimenting a stranger, even the ubiquitous handing out of flowers, is largely welcome. But is this actually kindness? If an act of kindness happens and no one is there to film it, did it really happen?

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    What’s next for Afghanistan?

    • Hava Rezaie, Hayat Akbari, Zaki Haidari
    • 28 September 2021
    6 Comments

    It has now been over a month since the Taliban seized Kabul. As attention inevitably shifts elsewhere, the painful question arises: What's next? Is this another 'back to the future' moment? The signs are grim. Over the last two weeks, the Taliban have issued a number of edicts which demonstrate that their attitudes to women have not changed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rule of lucre

    • Martin Pike
    • 01 June 2021
    13 Comments

    The fact is that money still buys a better service from the legal system, and to claim otherwise is to throw out the most basic principles of an economy. After all, if there were no benefit to be gained from backing up a truck full of money and tipping 30 or 40 grand a day into a team of silks, junior barristers and top tier solicitors, why would those with the means do it? To argue the contrary beggars belief. And if the observation is accepted, what does that tell us about the rule of law?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The transformative potential of a universal basic income

    • Tim Dunlop
    • 04 May 2021
    8 Comments

    The debate about the future of work, and therefore UBI, was hijacked by a reductive media narrative around ‘the robot question’ and this has made it hard to recognise the complex nature of the changes underway.

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  • FAITH DOING JUSTICE

    Social justice is not a spectator sport

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 February 2020
    5 Comments

    Catholic reflection on social justice has been supercharged by Pope Francis, who in his encyclical Laudato Si declared the Cry of the Poor and the Cry of the Earth to be central to faith. He also insisted that neither could be addressed simply by technological fixes but required personal conversion to see the world as gift to be respected, a home, and not as a prison or a mine.

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