In Australia there is no greater rights struggle than the Aboriginal rights struggle. It is a human rights struggle where not only the First Peoples of this continent were violently and murderously dispossessed of their lands but since the advent of British colonialism onto their shores they were subjected to segregation, apartheid and the systematic […]
January 2015
On January 11th 2014 I wrote the following as part of an article about casual racism: “Last night, as I watched the Perth Scorchers win their T20 game against the Sydney Sixers, I reflected on the many derisive comments that I have heard in the last few years about people of Muslim faith. The generalisations […]
I stood there, in my underwear. They were pale blue, with small flowers on them. I remember it very clearly – mostly because there were four men in the room who I had never met before. They were looking at my body, and my mother wore a worried expression. The tallest man touched me. “You […]
Delegates and supporters of the Freedom Movement have set themselves a date with destiny after marching on Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday declaring they would be back in even larger numbers on February 9 to confront the country’s politicians about their treatment and policies affecting First Nations People. More than 200 delegates and supporters […]
On New Year’s Day a little girl was born, opening her eyes to the world, but to what kind of a world? Compassionate or merciless? By this Thursday, only 28 days old this little baby will be homeless. It is bullshit a 28 day old baby should be homeless. Not just this little baby but also her […]
One of the major reasons Western Australia’s prison population is at a record high is because the State is jailing poverty stricken fine defaulters. The State’s Corrective Service Minister, Joe Francis, supports the jailing as a due punishment. More than 15 per cent of Western Australia’s prison population is comprised by fine defaulters. Ludicrously, they […]
At least Peter Greste has what the majority of those who are unjustly persecuted or imprisoned have not. Mr Greste has the lens of the world’s media watching over him. From within this support Mr Greste has drawn strength while incarcerated in Cairo’s Mazraa’s prison. On New Year Day’s Mr Greste wrote a letter to […]
The Bureau of Prisons contacted me today, assigning me a prison number and a new address: for the next 90 days, beginning tomorrow, I’ll live at FMC Lexington, in the satellite prison camp for women, adjacent to Lexington’s federal medical center for men. Very early tomorrow morning, Buddy Bell, Cassandra Dixon, and Paco and Silver, […]
“Go back to his books and rediscover the potency and the appeal – and, often, the joie d’esprit – of his writings: on cricket, on Muhammad Ali, on his own journey as an anti-Zionist Jew and, of course, on Bob Dylan.” Anne Beech, Pluto Press. “The crowd reminds me that I only put myself in […]
The term ‘Aborigine’ means ‘been there since the beginning of time.’ The term ‘indigenous’ was mainly used to describe plants and animals. It means ‘native to the land.’ Rosalie Kunoth-Monks asserted, “I am not an Aboriginal, or indeed indigenous, I am … (a) first nation’s person. A sovereign person from this country.” (Rosalie Kunoth-Monks, 2014) […]
General News
- 8 Jun 2018
It’s been many a year since I reviewed my position in so far as an Australian republic is concerned. I know that from my arrival here 43 years ago I have always felt extremely uneasy about the fact that the […]
(0) - 3 May 2018
Over the last five or six years I have written extensively about the sheer discrimination that is present in our migration system here in Australia. That discrimination is not on the basis of race (that is another angle altogether – […]
(1) - 24 Apr 2018
Many reckon they understand the accumulation of life stresses hurting those who live below or in close proximity to the poverty line. Poverty and suicide intersect. Poverty and incarceration intersect. Incarceration and homelessness intersect. The layers of stresses and the […]
(0) - 22 Apr 2018
Wheelchairs for Kids is one of those one in a million charities where everyone is a volunteer, where no one draws any form of remuneration. In its three decades since establishment, it has donated rough terrain children’s wheelchairs to 73 […]
(0) - 17 Apr 2018
Seven million Australians live in rural and remote Australia. There are also 1,000 remote communities, the majority with few or no services. Australians living rural and remote have shorter lives, with more than half of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islanders […]
(0) - 17 Apr 2018
There have been millions of casualties as a result of the catastrophes in Syria, with a half million dead, with millions of refugees, with collective human consciousness diminished and reduced to the aberrant. It is said that no lie lives […]
(0) - 14 Apr 2018
There is an under-reporting of poverty and homelessness. The horrendous lie of our generation is the one that poverty is being reduced right around the world. In fact it is increasing but there are diabolical efforts to mask this. Poverty […]
(0) - 11 Apr 2018
Racism so deep, that it’s structural, institutional. In 1983, I wrote that despite an increasing number of overseas born culturally diverse Australians, that they and their Australian born children did not reflect in the demography of the nation’s parliaments and […]
(0) - 9 Apr 2018
Nearly 60,000 Australian children have been removed by child protection authorities into “out-of-home-care”, with over 17,000 of the removed children comprised of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander children. Australia’s child removal rates are among the world’s highest. From a racialised […]
(0) - 3 Apr 2018
The funding for child protection totals $4 billion and we have a predicament where state and territory governments spend only 17 per cent of it on family support services. Child protection and family services should focus on assisting vulnerable families […]
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