The Concert for Matargarup: Refugees on Our Homelands was a profound gathering of peoples, sending the message that with many feet on the ground, at the coalface, we can make real change. The homeless and the many good people of Perth gathered in great numbers to stand alongside each other in the name of long […]
May 2015
More children of the First Peoples of this continent are removed now than in any year of the Stolen Generations – 1903 to 1970. From a racialised lens the removal of Aboriginal children from their families by Government agencies appears to be the highest child removal rate in the world. I cannot find a statistic […]
There continues the threat to close down Homelands and their communities by the sleight of hand of audit and consultation, but many say they do not want their communities to be audited for the purpose of whether they should exist or not. The Western Australian Government has also thrown into the wash the promise of […]
In late January, the Indonesian police announced the seizure of four and one quarter tonnes of cannabis. The marijuana was not from overseas – it was Indonesian grown, in Aceh. Home grown marijuana is so cheap in Indonesia that it is rare for any overseas cartel or rogue to traffic marijuana from outside Indonesia. The […]
“All I want to do is hug my wife”. About a month ago I wrote an article in The Stringer that looked at the issue of people with disability in our Immigration detention Centres. The organisation I chair, The National Ethnic Disability Alliance (NEDA) had done a report which identified the numbers of people in […]
There should be just as much focus on suicide prevention as there is with trying to prevent homicides and domestic violence. All lives matter. There is no greater legacy that any Government can have than in the saving of lives. During the last ten years Australian homicide rates have been decreasing though tragically the number […]
Today, 17th May 2015, I was sent a petition for signature by Amnesty International. The petition attached here: referred to the case of Atena Farghadani in Iran who was facing trial for having drawn cartoons. In part the petition says the following: “28-year-old Atena will be tried on Tuesday of charges including ‘spreading propaganda against […]
Suicide prevention should be one of the most urgent priorities of our times – globally and nationally. The rates of suicide should be known, disaggregated and unmasked as the humanitarian crisis that in effect it really is – though little known, suicide is one of the issues of our times. Annually, suicide takes more lives on […]
Over the last few days there have been two announcements that have caught my attention in particular. The first of these was from a friend of mine Abdulrahim Elmi. Elmi is a passionate advocate for the young Muslim people of Perth and over recent months has been having various conversations with me and others about […]
Thousands of asylum seekers are cruelly languishing at sea with one nation after another turning them back. But this is not the first time. During the 1980s, Thailand pushed back out to sea rickety boats of desperate asylum seekers. Southeast Asia found itself setting up razor wire refugee camps where hundreds of thousands of asylum […]
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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