The official position of the church on the Voice referendum is curious, because, despite overwhelming support for a YES vote from an extraordinary range of Catholic agencies, religious orders and congregations, and voluntary Catholic organisations, the highest national church authority, the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, has not followed suit. This is surprising because the whole Continue reading »
Community
This is a story of what a voice can achieve and how easily it is undone by external forces. A little over 35 years ago I was Council Clerk and CDEP Coordinator for a small indigenous community in the far reaches of the Northern Territory tablelands. I saw my task was to act as the Continue reading »
Its mid-summer in Rome and last week there was a heat wave with a top temperature of 38° Celsius. Hot days in Rome are stifling, with the heat compounded by the over-whelming influx of tourists. Like most Italian institutions, the Vatican normally closes down in summer, with previous popes retiring to Castel Gandolfo on Lake Continue reading »
Why the new ALP government’s new Child Care funds should restore its social benefits and stop funding the failing profit/market model. It has been 50 plus years since the McMahon Liberal government included preschool funding, the first since WW2. In 1972 the new Whitlam ALP Government promised the funding of Children’s services programs to meet Continue reading »
Major General Greg Melick, a member of the Australian War Memorial Council, would be in a very interesting position in any public company committed to best practice corporate governance principles. Melick is RSL President and a vocal opponent of any representation of the Frontier Wars in the Australian War Memorial. Only people who served in Continue reading »
There is rising wrath, out there in Elderland. The Elders, it seems, are no longer happy to look on as a bunch of corporates and their political stooges pillage the planet and lay waste their grandchildren’s future. With growing resolve, resources and organisation, older people are fighting back. Rather than sitting meekly in their retirement Continue reading »
Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone? – Joni Mitchell How many times have you seen the life of a great Australian eulogised on page 2 of the New York Times? Perishing few, if any, is my impression. Yet that august American journal took time and Continue reading »
There is growing support for a government-owned “people’s bank”, like the original Commonwealth Bank, operating through post offices, which could provide full banking services to every community and force the Big Four private banks to truly compete. At dramatic hearings of the Senate inquiry into bank closures in regional Australia in Queensland last week, more Continue reading »
As the people of Thailand say, ‘same, same.’ Here we go again. Another indigenous Australian, and this one an educated, travelled, and articulate First Nation public intellectual is being maligned. Stan Grant has stepped away from the ABC, as a result of persistent and vitriolic racist abuse. The persistence of racism Those most aligned with Continue reading »
The Uluru Statement from the Heart is a mirror to Australia saying, “Look how much we’ve already done as a nation.” It’s just time to bring it home. – Professor Megan Davis, John Menadue Oration, 2020 The Centre for Policy Development (CPD) supports a Voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and supports a Continue reading »