There is poverty in this nation that in general is hidden from the light of day but where the media and governments lend their lens to the acutest poverty, to the marginalised it is relayed as a portrayal of irreparable dysfunction. This is the case all too often with the portrayal of a significant number […]
October 2016
The ‘child protection’ monoliths right across the nation are vastly overfunded. It is not true that they are underfunded and overstretched. Child protection budgets should be radically reduced to one-sixth in order to end the humanitarian crises they are generating. The child protection and ‘family services’ monoliths are responsible for the record levels of child […]
Recently, I opened up a piece with having been informed of a former refugee who has taken his life, of a mother who has taken her life, of a young Aboriginal woman who has taken her life, of a former inmate who has taken his life, of a newly arrived migrant who has taken her […]
The derivation of misoxeny – hate of strangers – is the Greek word μισοξένος (misoxenos). It is a word that as a child I soaked up and which has stayed with me through half a century of life. Our nation is haunted by misoxeny as opposed to the softer version of xenophobia. On my first […]
The degradation and maltreatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander detainees and inmates is longstanding and prevalent throughout the nation’s prisons. There is a constancy of traumas borne of racism and discrimination and unfairness. The grim reality is an abomination. If you are in your 20s and Black you are more likely to be a […]
Over the last three years, in my capacity as President of the National Ethnic Disability Alliance I have almost become inured to anger when I come across another instance of discrimination against people with disability (PWD) in our immigration system. However, the pain does not stop. Irrespective of the number of times I have seen […]
“Dad, I pray that I will not wake up…” the words of a six-year-old Noongar child. Australia remains hostage to its racism, imperiously denying the grim reality. We must not walk past the racism and the discrimination. The racism is deep and the many veils cannot disguise. The racism plays out in an oppressor/oppressed dichotomy […]
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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