18 years young, Phillinka died on October 18 last year. At the time, at her anguished mother’s request I wrote of the loss of Phillinka and of so many others in the Kimberley. I am once again in the Kimberley – surrounded by the most pristine nature and by the loss of so many young […]
August 2015
I remember when I looked into the eyes of a mother who had lost her daughter to the despicable veils and layers of racism, whose life ended at just 22 years young, and the words that poured out were “There are no words for your loss…” The ages shall not dim injustices perpetrated. There are […]
Last year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics there were 2,620 reported deaths of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islanders in 2012 of which it was reported that 117 were suicides, with six yet to be classified at the time of publication. Earlier this year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported a record-high 2,811 deaths, […]
On Sunday night, just before 11 p.m. I received a disturbing Facebook private message. The message read as follows: (I reproduce it with spelling errors etc to be true to the message) “We are asylum seeker in australian detention in nauru island.and we living for 26 month here. my sister 2 month ago assulted and […]
Why would I take any notice of this complete and utter racist? In fact if I looked up the dictionary definition of the word racist I would more than likely see a picture of Sam Newman there. Yesterday Newman weighed in again into the Adam Goodes incident and a host of other issues around diversity […]
Yesterday, as part of the campaign to establish homeless friendly precincts right across Perth as a minimum standard in responding to the homelessness crisis, Jennifer Kaeshagen and I met with the Lord Mayor and Deputy Mayor of the City of Perth. Homeless friendly precincts are a sliver of human dignity to the homeless – a can-do, […]
I would be inclined to argue myself as a prison abolitionist – for the most part we can do away with prisons and certainly by all means do away with prisons as a punitive, penal estate. The punishment and control bit just does not work but yet we throw more money at it – and […]
There has been very little research on how many Australians and how many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have been to prison. There is very little information collected on what happens to people post-prison. It has been my long-held view that in general people come out of prison worse than when they went in. There […]
In staring at the United States of America, the mother of all statistics horrific, the rest of the world’s nations can see the future if we do not change course. America jails one in four of the world’s incarcerated and has the widest divide between rich and poor, is abominably harsh on its poor and […]
by Kathy Kelly and Buddy Bell A second round of peace talks between Afghan government officials and Taliban representatives, expected to begin before the end of July, 2015, suggests that some parties to the fighting want to declare a cease fire. But even in the short time since the first round on July 7th, fighting […]
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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