“You want me to respect the law? Then make the law respectable.” Violet Miller, Suffragette, 2015. Over the past two years Mr Mullins has walked his long dark night of…
Before launching into this post, Blak and Black wishes to congratulate its good friend Mr. Julian Moti QC on his admission to the Fiji bar and imminent return to the…
I want to tell you a story about a woman, Born in the first quarter of the twentieth century in an indigenous community, Who knew life on the land, a…
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.…
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…
''Quite often before they get there [to court] they have done something quite serious. It becomes quite difficult because the offending behaviour is the first point that you've got to…
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…
“… 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…
“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,…
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…
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…
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,…
Misogyny is a nasty word. It implies much more than sexism; it indicates a hatred of women. That’s why, in the overall view of the current political debates I must…
“Behead all those who insult the prophet!” So read the banner in Sydney on Saturday, in a protest ignited by a film released in the United States. Really, the lack…
Charity begins at home. Some agree, some do not. But the simple fact is that our treatment of those close to us sets the foundations for our behaviours toward others.…
Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene I hardly paid any attention. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting…
Lies, I know, can be so furbished And disguised in gorgeous wrappings That their skinny carcasses Not a soul would recognize. That's what you've been doing now, With your wonderful…
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. Milan Kundera One of the first Communist texts I read, following the French edition of Quotations from…
It was freezing last night where I slept in my travels, below freezing in fact. In Bangerang country, home of the Yorta Yorta people, Mother Nature may have frozen the…
Canberra's Billabong Aboriginal Development Corporation is the ACT's finalist for the National Landcare awards, Indigenous section. Responding to a question from the ABC’s Rural programme, Billabong’s founder and chairman Jim…