When the chair of the Indigenous Advisory Council, Warren Mundine went national with his now famous call for Treaty between First Nation peoples and the Australian Government it took four days for the news to reach Yirrkala and Nhulunbuy. Four days passed before Yalmay Yunupingu learned of the call for Treaty. I phoned Ms Yunupingu […]
January 2014
The Federal Government has defunded the National Congress of the First Peoples of Australia – from June 2014 there will be no more Government funding. The Congress the previous Government’s promise of $5 million per year each year for the next three years. However the Congress is touring the nation major cities and holding urgent […]
Oxford and Cambridge scholar, linguist Professor Ghil‘ad Zuckermann is calling for the Federal Government to financially compensate First Nations Peoples who had their languages “stolen” and to invest that compensation in reclaiming their languages. Professor Zuckermann has been working with First Nations communities to restore where possible their languages and said that it goes to the […]
Western Australia has one of the nation’s highest homelessness rates – well, why would it not when Government itself induces en masse homelessness. In 2003 the Western Australian State Government closed down the Swan Valley Nyungah Community’s residences in the north eastern Perth suburb of Lockridge because of allegations of sexual abuse against only one […]
Today, I spoke with Yalmay Yunupingu – wife of the late Dr Yunupingu, who famously responded to Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s broken promise (to the Baranga Statement, 1988) with the internationally acclaimed song, TREATY. Despite days passing since news media around the country published and broadcast Warren Mundine’s and Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s support for […]
by Andrew Davis Warren Mundine is talking about “forgiving” as being as important as the Government’s apology in terms of the reconciliation process. I disagree wholeheartedly! Whilst the apology only went a small way in the journey to forgiveness, I cannot (and will not) forgive until the Australian government takes a leaf from its own […]
Institutional sexual abuse and other violence and maltreatment are now a known historical fact of numerous religious or carer institutions – but there is still a long way to go in archiving many of the more horrific abuses that occurred, some on a relative en masse scale. By any measure the repetitive nature of the […]
It is “Australia Day” and I’m reeling still from the sledgehammer to my psyche that was my first viewing of John Pilger’s “Utopia” a few days ago. It was my honour to have been invited to the premiere screening here in Perth by Robert and Selina Eggington of the Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation. I’ve had the privilege […]
Sherif Samir, writing from Egypt In the past year, during the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, when the darkness of fanatical Muslims beset Egypt, and when it seemed that the spirit of resistance was fading, and people were giving up, I was observing women, wondering how the new situation was affecting their looks, their clothes, […]
Josephine Cashman is a lawyer and a businessperson and in October was appointed to the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council. Here is Ms Cashman’s Australia Day speech: By Josephine Cashman Today is Australia Day, a day that many Indigenous people call Survival Day. The title for my speech tonight is ‘Survival is a process […]
General News
- March 9, 2021
Australia’s governments must end health discrimination in its prisons. An incarcerated child must not be a second-class citizen. Nor any adult. We must ask, why are our governments dishing the vulnerable jailed, second-class healthcare? When evaluating the nation’s carceral system, we are […]
- February 2, 2021
When will the cries of the homeless be heard? Is there some sort of grotesque caste system in Western Australia? The anti-humanism is a brutal public spectacle. On the last day of January, the Western Australian Government actuated five days […]
- December 3, 2020
West Australia is the nation’s backwater. It is the mother of injustices, inequalities and the draconian. West Australia and the Northern Territory leave the have-nots that far behind, for many their lot appears irreparable. If there is a Mason-Dixon line […]
- September 22, 2020
There are many faces to homelessness. A 51-year-old woman walked into my Perth office. She has lived thirteen consecutive years street-homeless. Not long ago, she spent eighteen months sleeping her nights in the same park. She is weary, harrowed by […]
- September 3, 2020
Often beleaguered by international aid work I have lifelong been involved in; the increasing unmet needs, the mongrel injustices, I have argued the horrendous lie of our generation is that poverty is being reduced around the world. There are countries […]
- March 10, 2020
Gerry Georgatos – In 2014, I disaggregated to the Kimberley’s First Nations peoples, the nation’s highest suicide rate, one of the world’s highest, at over 70 suicides per 100,000 population (First Nations), thereabouts seven times the national rate. Fortunately, although […]
- February 18, 2020
Gerry Georgatos – More than 51 months ago I wrote an article on the imperatives of forgiveness and redemption. This remains true. We journey together in one form or another, we can either salt the earth or jag the road, […]
- January 29, 2020
By Gerry Georgatos – Trae lost his eleven-year-old brother to suicide. Nine months later he lost his mother to suicide. Trae was the last to see his brother. Half an hour later he went looking for his little brother. In the […]
- January 21, 2020
Gerry Georgatos – Children as young as 9 years have been lost to suicide, three in fact in recent years. Australians should ask, why? Proportionally, more children aged 14 years and less have been lost so far this century compared […]
- December 10, 2019
Gerry Georgatos – A mother suicides, a father suicides, their child was a suicide. Not once has this occurred but untold times. Over the years I have warned of mothers and fathers that would be near certain lost to suicide […]
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