By Frances Goold Voice Crash Investigation [1] 1 ‘Mario, what’s your relationship to this park?’ ‘This is the park where my wife and I got married, roughly eight years ago.’ ‘And what did you father say to you at the wedding?’ ‘My dad told the photographer he didn’t want that statue in our wedding pictures’.…
By Frances Goold Voice Crash Investigation [1] 1 ‘Mario, what’s your relationship to this park?’ ‘This is the park where my wife and I got married, roughly eight years ago.’ ‘And what did you father say to you at the wedding?’ ‘My dad told the photographer he didn’t want that statue in our wedding pictures’.…
Politics is a strange game… Now, I realise a lot of people are going to tell me that it’s not a game and that political decisions have real and profound impacts on people and calling it a game is offensive… which is why I added the word strange. I don’t want to use the words…
By Allan Richardson I don’t flabbergast easily, but listening to so-called sentients suggesting that the Middle East conflict was unrelated to religious differences, it’s clear that they’ve never heard of Jerusalem! Would King Solomon have cut it in half after having built its first synagogue? Would he have divided Palestine into equitable ‘halves’ so that…
Apparently during the recent referendum, there were a number of social media posts that suggested if Australia had voted for the proposed Voice to Parliament all sorts of dire consequences would occur. Some claimed that we would all lose our homes. The same claim was made at the time of the Mabo Decision in the…
There has always been something impressive, if slightly idiosyncratic, about political ideas emanating from Pacific states. In recent years, on the world’s largest body of water, the various island states seeing themselves as part of the Blue Pacific have tried to identify a set of principles by which to abide, forming an understanding of the…
By Stephen Charles and Lucy Hamilton The Victorian government has just acted to ensure that the Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission (IBAC) is neutered by a subtle gambit in the crafting of the advertisement seeking applicants for the position of Commissioner. The first requirement in the ad was for a “leader with demonstrated experience and exceptional…
I must begin by congratulating Murdoch’s news media and the Australian Conservative political parties for their successful long-term character assassination of those who are different. Meaning First Nations people. Whilst I am primarily concerned with racism, it is essential to acknowledge that several factors influenced the referendum result. The first and most vital was the…
Yesterday, the Coalition called for a Royal Commission into spending on Indigenous people and child abuse in Indigenous communities. Normally, I don’t comment on how best to solve any problems in these areas because I have no expertise…Well, apart from being an old, white male which is usually enough to make one an expert on…
It took place with hardly any debate, though it interested some parliamentary members at the committee stage. The Australian state of Victoria now faces laws that will lock a person up for 12 months or punish individuals with fines of A$23,000 or above if they dare enact a gesture. That gesture is giving, with intent,…