All history is politics, and every politics is a future. The proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament is part of a collection of actions seeking to hold colonial history and post-colonial future together, and so to propose a new Australian polity. Australian colonial history is painful, and our natural aversion to pain makes the appropriate mode Continue reading »
Indigenous affairs
The gutsy thing for Anthony Albanese to do in the wake of the coalition’s decision to vote “no” in the Voice referendum would be to carry on virtuously with the ballot, taking such advantage as he can from the Liberals’ decision to break the heart of more than half the country. But the inspired response Continue reading »
Last month, the Djab Wurrung, Gunnai and Gunditjamara Senator Lidia Thorpe, cut ties with the Greens. In moving to the crossbench, she claimed it was her intention to represent the “black sovereign” movement in the Parliament – a movement that had strong grassroots in Australia, “full of staunch and committed warriors”. The black sovereign movement Continue reading »
Poverty is powerlessness. It is the incapacity to deal with one’s own issues. It is not addressed through charitable acts, but through empowerment. Responding to the presenting signs of poverty only through acts of charity is like dealing with a major physical ailment only with a pain killer. Indeed, addiction to the pain killer can Continue reading »
At least until the 1964 Freedom Rides, Australia had a Jim Crow system every bit as bad as in the American South. Modern Anglo-Australians sometimes congratulate themselves about that moment in white Australia’s progress to semi-civilisation 56 years ago when Australian voters acknowledged Australia’s original inhabitants, and grudgingly allowed that they could be numbered among Continue reading »
The latest NAPLAN results show shocking inequalities in school outcomes between highly advantaged and disadvantaged students in NSW. Very high proportions of low socio-economic status (SES), Indigenous and remote area students do not achieve national literacy and numeracy standards compared to very small proportions of high SES students. By Year 9, low SES, Indigenous and Continue reading »
It goes without saying, and even better with saying, that America’s destiny is now tied up with China, which means so too is Australia’s. There has, of course, been a lot of commentary on this and on the diplomatic role that middle powers play in an evolving relationship. What has been absent, to some degree, Continue reading »
It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the referendum on the Voice will be won not as a virtually unanimous offering to First Nations Australians but narrowly in an ugly, bitter and divisive brawl between older and younger Australians. Even a win will have the capacity to leave divisions in the nation, and Continue reading »
Opinion polls suggest Peter Dutton and his media accomplices – both Murdoch and the Nine Newspapers – are having some initial success in confusing The Voice issue. It’s not surprising as the tactic has worked very well in many countries in many situations for a long time as the author recently described. It also suits Continue reading »
Australia has a racist constitution. It gives the Federal Parliament power to make laws for ‘The people of any race, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws’. Deemed necessary, that is, by the Parliament itself. The argument for including such a provision in the Constitution was provided at the conventions that drafted Continue reading »