By Jane Salmon Afghans living overseas are certainly refugees since the fall of Kabul and US withdrawal a year ago. Therefore, the Hazara minority, who have been abused under every Afghan government for hundreds of years have been refugees even longer. Australia has had a longstanding policy of not letting many refugees in via Indonesia,…
It took a few years of tolerable incompetence, caused fears about security, and was meant to be the great surveillance salvation to reassure us all. Instead, Australia’s COVIDSafe App only identified two positive cases of infection during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, and failed, in every sense of the term, to work. Launched in April 2020, this…
Scenes and pictures have been circulating of broken earth, lacking moisture, cracked and yearning. But these are not from traditional drought-stricken parts of the planet, where the animal carcass assumes near totemic power amidst dry riverbeds or desert expanses. Neither Australia nor Africa feature on these occasions – at least in a prominent way. Europe,…
By Bronwyn Kelly David Solomon has raised an important issue in Pearls and Irritations this week. He has suggested some opinion leaders may argue there is little point in a referendum to enshrine a Voice for First Nations in Australia’s Constitution because the Commonwealth parliament already has the power to legislate for creation of such…
I have a confession to make. I have posted some of the following words in a previous article. Probably more than once. But I do so this time within an atmosphere of change. We have been through a period I have named “The Luddite Period” and survived with the hope that a more empathetic, transparent…
By Callen Sorensen Karklis While Australia finally passes its 43% climate targets laws under the Albanese Labor Government with the help of the Australian Greens led by Adam Bandt and the Climate 200 backed Teals (10 seats), already the new federal government has strengthened the safeguard mechanism that the Coalition introduced after the repealing the…
Climate Change Authority Media Release Released today, the Climate Change Authority’s Review of International Offsets finds the international carbon market is still evolving in response to the Paris Agreement and calls for publication of a National Carbon Market Strategy that makes the most of this opportunity for Australia to accelerate ambition on emissions reduction. The…
Cambodia has often featured in the Western imagination as a place of plunder and pilfering. Temples and artefacts of exquisite beauty have exercised the interest of adventurers and buccaneers who looted with almost kleptocratic tendency. In 1924, the French novelist and future statesman André Malraux, proved himself one of Europe’s greatest adventurers in making off…
If we attempt to compare Aboriginal land use with that of the early settlers, we should broaden the meaning of ‘land use’. We should move away from the narrow European notion of agriculture and horticulture, to one which includes religious and cultural associations with the land, and one which allows the skills and the bounty…
Now I need to be careful here because I know that while a lot of people think that everything is political correctness gone mad, there are still even more people that think that it’s wrong to be racist and sexist… That doesn’t mean that they don’t spend their day doing racist and sexist things because…