Sunshine in Melbourne’s west has seen all manner of refugees in the past half century. The current mix includes a significant proportion of men, women and children from A ...
April 9, 2013
The most recent public airing of a racist attack on a Korean man and his aunt visiting from his homeland has prompted another round of self-reflection on the Australian psyche. Waleed Aly published his point of view a few days ago and whilst I agree that all nations battle issues of racism, the difference is that they acknowledge the problem exists, unlike Australia. The Israelis, Palestinians, Americans, Canadians, Kiwis and ...
March 6, 2013
“We recognize international law …” Every country that is a member of the United Nations recognizes international law, Bob, at least as far as it serves their purposes. It seems to me that every nation also ignores any aspect of international law that puts some aspect of their own commercial or national value at risk. Every nation has at its heart not the rest of humanity, but it’s own nationalistic ...
February 17, 2013
I like to learn how to say people’s names properly. Not that I have a particularly good memory for pairing names with faces, but I believe it is a sign of respect when you pay enough attention to learn to say – and spell – someone’s name correctly. Perhaps it’s a legacy of those elocution lessons at primary school … Mrs. Edie would be amused. I also like to learn ...
February 9, 2013
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. Desmond Tutu Jeremy Fernandez, I’m sorry your two year old daughter learned, so early, that the colour palette is not always one with which she may paint azure ...
February 1, 2013
We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls – has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped ...
January 30, 2013
Thus Friend comforted me. I took great comfort from his counsel, and it seemed to me, indeed that he knew at least more than Reason did. But before he had finished his argument, which agreed strongly with me, Sweet Thought, and Sweet Talk came back, and from then on they stayed close to me and hardly ever left me afterward. But they did not bring Sweet Looks; I did not ...
January 28, 2013
In this month of Janus, it is interesting to note that the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) via the mouthpiece of the Fairfax media is aiming to show how far it has come in addressing racism within its ranks. Whilst the ACT may well look to the past to walk through the doorway into the future, it cannot continue to ignore that harms its own servants of the public have perpetuated ...
January 13, 2013
”Quite often before they get there they have done something quite serious. It becomes quite difficult because the offending behaviour is the first point that you’ve got to address and you can’t say that just because someone is Aboriginal they are excused from any criminal behaviour. Clearly that doesn’t work. You have to go back earlier, to why they are offending in the first place.” Chief Justice Terrence ...
January 2, 2013
I couldn’t resist writing this post. I just couldn’t. Because since well before the whole Destroy the Joint thing has started, Blak and Black has been fighting to draw attention to the plight of Ms. King, Australia’s most senior Indigenous female banking executive who was indecently assaulted in broad daylight in the political heart of the Australian Capital Territory, also know as Canberra in 2005. What happened to Ms. King ...
December 25, 2012
“… people with mental health problems want the same thing as everyone else. Even the disadvantaged should be able to lead a contributing life. This can mean many things. It can mean a fulfilling life enriched with close connections to family and friends, good health and wellbeing to allow those connections to be enjoyed, having something to do each day that provides meaning and purpose – whether it be a ...
December 10, 2012
“No-one ever argues that governments should have less integrity, that elected officials should not be accountable, or that public servants should behave unethically. Broad statements of the value of integrity, transparency, accountability and ethics gain general agreement from all sides of politics and from all participants in public debate. But government integrity demands more than general expressions of goodwill. Enhancing transparency and accountability requires supportive structures as well as declarations ...
December 6, 2012
Let us venture to advance another truth, a truth useful to the Minister himself. There exists among the officers of the Marine, an intractable esprit de corps, a pretended point of honour, equally false and arrogant, which leads them to consider as an insult to the whole navy, the discovery of one guilty individual. This inadmissible principle, which is useful only to insignificance, to intrigue, to people the least worthy ...
December 1, 2012
Dusk is falling across Melbourne and West Papua, but not over the dreams of the Papuan people. Today, remembering 51 years of oppression having been denied the right to self-determination, the West Papuan people gathered in Melbourne to celebrate their national day and raise awareness of the human rights abuses the people of West Papua still endure since the departure of the Dutch colonial governors. And on this day of ...
November 29, 2012
…believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, inalienable, and sacred rights of man…Men are born and remain free and equal in rights… These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression… Declaration of the Rights of Man and the ...
November 25, 2012
On Wednesday, November 21, the NSW Police arrested a man at Gosford train station for assaulting two people on a train. During that trip it is alleged that the man interfered with a 14 year old boy and a 44 year old woman whose breast he had grabbed. The offender has been charged with two counts of indecent assault. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Which makes me ask, why has ...
November 15, 2012
The announcement of a Royal Commission into child abuse by clergy is as big an issue as was the Wood Royal Commission into police corruption, if not bigger. This is no ordinary review of process or legality, but a direct attack on the primacy of religious and canon law over that of the state. Such a thing would never have happened a century ago, because the place of the church ...
November 13, 2012
Each man reaches perfection by doing his own duty; he worships god – from whom all beings come, by whom this universe was stretched forth – by doing his appointed work, with no desire for reward. You must do the work for its own sake and not for anything that it may bring to you. When pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat are the same to you, ...
November 10, 2012
A couple of weeks ago Mr. Julian Moti QC kindly pointed me toward a paper about the marginalization and usury of black women in the industrial age. Discussing the circumstances of the effective enslavement of Saartjie Baartman, also known as the Hottentot Venus and Truganini, Tasmania’s presumed last full-blood Aborigine, the paper investigated the means by which black women were dehumanized to become “black things”. The paper concluded with a ...
November 8, 2012
Lady, lady, hear her shout The black thing no-one sees about Lady, lady, on your knees Where white man says you must always be. Lady, lady, don’t you know You’re no more free than that nigger Truth Learn your place, and bow ’fore we The white ones with the power of sleaze! My full name is ...
October 26, 2012
If I could share a meal at a table with a small group of people from any time in history, Isabella Baumfree would be one of them. Perhaps, just perhaps, she could tell me how to help find justice for the Indigenous women ignored by the Australian Federal Police in Australia’s capital, Canberra. Isabella was born the daughter of slaves, enslaved herself from the moment of conception. Sold at the ...
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