– by Janet Galbraith with Behrouz Boochani “I don’t want to be written as a broken man”, says Behrouz Boochani, Kurdish journalist and writer incarcerated in Australia’s immigration prison camp in Papua New Guinea, after reading Roger Cohen’s ‘Broken Men in Paradise’ published December 9, 2016 in The New York Times. “I have punched the […]
December 2016
I have delayed writing this piece because I have been concerned that the story would get swamped in the season of goodwill and not inconsiderable libation that we have been indulging in during the last few days here in Australia. I have left the cudgels of this particular issue to be taken up by those […]
On January 3 2017, with New Year hangovers barely abated, bailiffs from the local Sherriff’s office, accompanied by staff from the State Housing Authority, will drive as a funereal convoy to an old house situated on the fringes of a small country town called Pinjarra, an hour’s drive south of Perth, Western Australia. Their arrival […]
An Arrernte mother to a newborn recently reflected of her childhood, one where she was removed from her parents, aged 6, and instead raised in foster care and four years later until 19 years of age in the permanent care of a White couple. She has no issue with the White strangers who became her […]
Some argue that there is no second Stolen Generation because there is no longer a prescribed policy that children should be removed on eugenic based reasoning. The argument today is that there is no longer an assimilate or perish agenda but go tell that to the thousands of families who have had their children removed […]
We often hear the claim that there are scores of services, many that duplicate what others do, in remote and regional Aboriginal communities. This reinforces the myth that some communities are ‘over-funded’. For instance, Roebourne in Western Australia’s Pilbara is said to have 67 service providers with over 400 programs for less than 1,200 residents. […]
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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