In the fog of my memories the deep cut through the mist is the connectedness, the meeting of people. One community I have had much to do with but had not been to until only several years ago is Beagle Bay. A beautiful sub-tropical pristine community of 400 residents. There is no police station, no […]
Suicide
Gerry Georgatos – Lena Andrews thinks of her daughter, Phillinka, every day. Phillinka, eighteen years old, died by suicide in the Kimberley’s Fitzroy. The services failed Phillinka. No-one but her family was there for her. Phillinka ended it all by hanging, on October 18, 2014. Lena and her family were not supported. It was all […]
Gerry Georgatos – A Robodebt contributed to the death by suicide of a 19 year-old-mother. Stressors and suicide are always the story. Society is defined by the sum of its relationships, and many relationships are that classist, racist, sexist, ableist, ageist that we devastate people. Australia is heading once again to 3,000 suicides. Once again, Australia […]
Gerry Georgatos – It has taken years for an at long last acknowledgement of the fact that nearly one-third of Australia’s suicides are of migrant born Australians, with a significant proportion relatively newly arrived. I have been writing relentlessly for years about the harrowing high number of suicides of the migrant-born and of the children […]
Gerry Georgatos – More suicides so far this year, than this time last year while the Commonwealth & COAG talk but do little. As of the first day of August, I estimate that 1700 Australians have been lost to suicide, more than this time last year. But what I indisputably do know that as of […]
Gerry Georgatos – Australia has nearly one-fifth of the world’s poker machines, 60 times the rate of the rest of the world. More than three-quarters of Australia’s 200,000 poker machines are in non-gaming venues; in recreation centres, clubs and pubs. Eighteen percent of the world’s poker machines pollute Australia, making poorer people of relatively little […]
Gerry Georgatos – Psychosocial is back. Disabling trauma as I’ve coined needs to core trauma understandings. Vicarious trauma is embedded in our daily lives. These premises may radicalise how we deal with trauma and conflict. There must be nothing that we fear discussing. Our psyches cannot remain as if unconscious. We need to develop substantial […]
Gerry Georgatos – Australia is by various accounts one of the world’s wealthiest countries despite many languishing in poverty and some in abject poverty. Australia is the world’s 12th biggest economy. According to the Global Wealth Report 2018 the median wealth of adult Australians is $264,903 AUD. That’s the highest in the world. The median […]
Gerry Georgatos – Annually, India accounts for nearly 200,000 of the world’s suicides. Poverty intersects and is the predominant underwriting narrative. Alarmingly, India accounts for nearly 40 percent of the world’s female suicides. Once again poverty intersects, particularly crushing levels of poverty. However, within the Indian poverty narrative there is pronounced patriarchy and within crushing […]
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 […]
Join us on