A royal commission into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicides is the only way forward to radically reducing the suicide crisis at least to parity with non-Aboriginal suicide rates. There is an abominable catastrophic crisis borne of the sense of hopelessness that far too many feel. Coronial inquests, parliamentary committee inquiries, hundred page reports will […]
March 2016
When the law is wrong what should you do? Obey it? Try to change it? What if you cannot change it, do you continue to obey it? When the common good is betrayed do we accept this? When the law jails the innocent, for instance for being homosexual, for protesting, for whistleblowing, do we accept […]
I have often argued that academics should shift their focus from studying the oppressed to examining the oppressor. The oppressor is a perpetrator and their crimes are rarely victimless crimes as opposed to the majority of the American prison population who are jailed for victimless crimes. The United States of America has a prison population […]
When the law jails people because they are gay, punishes people for marrying outside designated cultural groups, incites hate, should we abide quietly by those laws? Today, the world – most of its nations – jails more people than ever before in human history. “A theologian said that all will be well with me and all permitted […]
I have written before about the white supremacist groups here in Australia. I was trawling through the Internet last night and came across this rather handy guide about some of the numbers that may be significant in identifying this cohort of society that defies polite description and identification. “Numbers used by some white nationalists in […]
Police officers have admitted their culpability in the tragic death of Ms Dhu. Medical staff cost Ms Dhu her life. The putrid stench of racism was everywhere in the last days of Ms Dhu. Her family have been tormented since. The anguish borne by her mother, Della, by her grandmother Carol, by her uncle, Shaun […]
There will eventuate a royal commission into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander suicides. A political firestorm followed the tragic loss of a 10-year-old girl to suicide and one inquiry after another is being called but according to those in the suicide prevention space, only a royal commission can make a difference. Suicide prevention researcher Gerry Georgatos […]
“If austerity were tested like a medication in a clinical trial, it would have been stopped long ago, given its deadly side effects…. One need not be an economic ideologue – we certainly aren’t – to recognize that the price of austerity can be calculated in human lives.” David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu,“The body economic: […]
We cannot continue to live in the silences and dangerously internalise the tragedy of suicide and the multifactorial issues that contribute to self-harming and suicide. Suicide is an increasing toll for all Australians. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders it is a catastrophic humanitarian crisis. The internalising of grief and loss – the silences – […]
Where does it stop? Another day in paradise and the emergence of another Australian based Neo-Nazi group. This one is named Battalion 88. I have written before as to why these groups use numbers such as 88 and 14 in their names. Some combine the two and get additional “bang for their buck” by having […]
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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