There are some amazing human beings who have appeared on the global stage in the last decade who have done more for an informed public than the tens of thousands of journalists around the world combined over the last century. The courageous sacrifices of for instance Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden have flickered […]
February 2016
It is an abomination – moral, political and otherwise – when one in three deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders aged 15 to 35 years is a suicide. Suicide is this age group’s leading cause of death. It is an abomination when Australia, one of the world’s elite high income nations, stands idly by […]
Conissa is five years old, and her smile jags joy into her parents’ lives. Mum says, “Conissa has the biggest smile, it’s contagious.” On her mum’s side, Conissa is Kamilaroi and on her dad’s she’s Wiradjuri. But Conissa also has a battle and it is up to all of us to lend a hand. She […]
Social and political debates about racism rarely include the voices of the oppressed and are instead a prescription or stricture within the narrowest discourse. Australia’s major institutions and think tanks are not just in a hostile public denial of this nation’s knee deep racism despite the racism being self-evident, but are ruthlessly hostile to any […]
Filling jails with the traumautised – whether simple, multiple or complex traumas – should make no sense to anyone. We are filling prisons with the mentally unwell and not the criminally minded. Dr Richard Di Natale is right on the mark on the ways forward with the decriminalisation of the victims of illicit drug use […]
The mass incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders should be a civil rights issue, one of the pressing issues of our generation but our Governments – one after another – continue to fail to translate this pressing issue as a national priority. The incarceration rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is an […]
In terms of racism, nothing should surprise me in Western Australia, Australia’s backwater, but every once and a while I am surprised. The Western Australian Government has betrayed the tragic memory of the 22-year-old Yamatji woman who died in a police watch house cell in South Hedland. There is no doubt that racism dished a heavy […]
A study by Justin Farrell titled Corporate Funding and Ideological Polarization about climate change confirms what many have argued- that behind climate change scepticism and denial is corporate money. These findings are not surprising to many people. Advocacy and environmental groups have exposed this connection before (here, here and here). However, Farrell’s study is one […]
2015 saw a surge of leftist and radical movements and the rise of anti-austerity forces across Europe. So it is interesting to see this week’s launch of DiEM 25 (Democracy in Europe Movement 2025), a new left-wing cross-European progressive movement to democratise Europe and present alternatives to austerity and authoritarianism. The purpose of DiEM is to act as […]
In a recent article in The Sunday Times the Australian Liberty Alliance announced with some considerable fanfare that Dr Marion Hercock was to be their new senate candidate. Dr Hercock is an academic at the University of WA. I am on one of the UWA’s Equity and Inclusion committees and immediately raised the matter with […]
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