Peter Whiting. With a Federal election being tipped for mid-May 2019, and an April budget to accommodate it, it is hardly surprising that the budget handed down on 2 April had a number of initiatives clearly focused on specific community groups and marginal electorates in the hope of influencing electors’ voting decisions. It just would […]
Tony French. Record greenhouse gas emissions are driving global temperatures to dangerous levels. This is the dire conclusion in the latest World Meteorological Organisation report, WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate In 2018. The WMO is part of the United Nations. The WMO report highlights record sea level rises, as well as […]
Bruce Duncan. The appalling massacre in March of so many Muslim people in New Zealand’s Christchurch has shocked our countries deeply, and illustrated how urgent is the need to deepen understanding and increase solidarity among our faith communities. The Christchurch event was one in a too-long list of religiously motivated terror acts against Muslims, Christians, […]
Terry Moran. From an oration in honour of Jim Carlton AO at the University of Melbourne 25 March 2019. I want to talk about what I’m going to describe as a mission – Australia’s next long wave of reform. It is this third wave of reform which must bring us to a compact on the […]
Terry Moran. Economies such as ours are now experiencing a new debate about localism (as it is described in the UK), or a increasingly broad role for city government or regions (this being the focus of the debate in the United States). The Europeans have for some time called this subsidiarity for some time. Community […]
Andrew Glikson. According to Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chief climate advisor to the European Union, “We’re simply talking about the very life support system of this planet”. As fascism and the horror of murderous hate crimes are spreading around the world, governments are presiding over runaway climate change, leading toward a mass extinction of species, costing […]
Editorial. Future generations will struggle to understand why key Australian politicians and sections of the media refused so long to recognise that global warming was an immediate threat to Australia and the world. January 2019 was the hottest month on record in Australia, with the nation’s mean temperature above 30C for the first time. According […]
Marianna Brungs, University of Sydney. This is the final article in the Reclaiming the Fair Go series, a collaboration between The Conversation, the Sydney Democracy Network, and the Sydney Peace Foundation to mark the awarding of the 2018 Sydney Peace Prize to Nobel laureate and economics professor Joseph Stiglitz. These articles reflect on the crisis […]
Frank Bongiorno, Australian National University. This is part of a major series, called Advancing Australia, in which leading academics examine the key issues facing Australia in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election and beyond. Read the other pieces in the series here. What will a Shorten government be like? It’s hazardous to predict how […]
Sarah Puls. I have the power to show, through the choices I make, that everybody matters, that I don’t want any slaves working for me, says Good Samaritan Sister Sarah Puls. One of the most courageous people I’ve ever had the pleasure to know is a woman named Mary (not her real name), who was […]
