There is a historic opportunity unfolding for the High Court of Australia to improve the bargaining powers of native title claimants. It is nearly a quarter of a century since the Mabo 2 High Court ruling that dissed on the racist cruelty of ‘terra nullius’. In this 25th year since the historic Mabo decision it […]
February 2017
On March 11, West Australians will vote in the state government elections. Western Australia enjoys the nation’s highest median wage, one of the world’s highest but the poorest, the most vulnerable, the incarcerated have it harder than anywhere else in the nation. One in 13 of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander adult males are in […]
From 2008 to 2012, and even thereafter, Indonesian children were jailed in Australian adult prisons. They were cooks and deckhands on boats providing passage to asylum seeks who had languished in Indonesia. Lawyer Lisa Hariej is acting on their behalf in the Central Jakarta District Court, pursuing a class action against the Australian Government for […]
For some years the closing the gap targets masked the crises of half-lives and dirt-poor conditions that sadly trap a significant proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. In recent years the failures have been publicly acknowledged. Let us look at the report before delving into other measures that describe a harrowing catastrophic narrative of […]
We should be doing everything possible to ensure people come out of the prison experience in a better state than when they went in. It is my experience that in general people come out of prison in a worse state than when they went in. We should be doing everything we can to ensure that […]
There is not an article that I write on trauma or suicide prevention which has gone by without my just being informed of a suicide. I have written hundreds of articles on trauma, suicides and suicide prevention. Last year in an article I wrote for The Guardian, published on World Suicide Prevention Day, I opened […]
Non-Indigenous Australians are incarcerated at around 200 per 100,000 adults but Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander adults are incarcerated at 2,330 per 100,000 Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander adults. It’s beyond any justification – it’s an abomination. However the narrative of human misery and suffering is worst in Western Australia where Aboriginal adults are incarcerated […]
There are gross inequalities and injustices, narratives of misery and disadvantage, where the narrative is ongoing because ‘inalienable’ rights are not worked to or short-changed by governments and state institutions. Instead the affected are sold ‘resilience’. But resilience alone does not guarantee expectations. Resilience has been the buzz word for quite some time and instead […]
“Protest that endures.. is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success; namely the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence”. Wendell Berry In Perth’s southern suburbs a remarkable community- based campaign and furious community opposition and protest is delaying the controversial […]
Many argue that Australia is “better” than the racism that mires it knee-deep. As a nation, we are not better than the sum of the diabolical racism that sees Australian society fractured and many from within the fracture at odds with each. The majority of migrants and children of migrants – of the ‘diaspora’ – […]
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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