Beware the tolling bell
“Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris” (Now this bell, tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.) I have long loved John Donne’s Meditation XVII; it remains pause for…
“Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris” (Now this bell, tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.) I have long loved John Donne’s Meditation XVII; it remains pause for…
Callahan and colleagues (2002)[i] suggested that organizations must focus on three trust-building tactics – accountability, reliance, and aspiration – to cultivate helpful internal whistleblowing procedures. These principles provide people and…
It was pointed out to me last night that I had missed Mr Gary Lee-Rogers from my list of serving AFP/APS officers who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for insisting…
“A State cannot claim to be operating under the rule of law unless laws are administered fairly, rationally, predictably, consistently and impartially.” (Chief Justice Spigelman, as he then was, in…
I have borrowed the title from Michael Stolleis' oxymoronically titled book Justice within Injustice which is about, oxymoronically, justice in the Third Reich. After having read Stolleis' essays, in which…
In the 1960s Donald Horne observed, "Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck." This observation was followed in the 1990s by Paul Keating when…
In 1896 J. B. Moore, with what turned out to be prophetic insight, drew attention to the possibility of the immigration laws of the United States being utilised for the…
The following is a letter I received from a reader of Blak and Black and the Fiji Sun, talking about his experiences as a Pakistani/Australian living in Australia’s Capital, Canberra: Dear…
Ah, Sam, you have really got up my nose. And given that smell contributes roughly seventy percent to taste, I can only say you’ve put me off my food! How…
In fact, the worst offender of institutionalised discrimination and marginalisation of Aboriginal people is the government.—Neil Gillespie, head of the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement Inc, South Australia ('Poor health, racism…
The same sentencing principles are to be applied, of course, in every case, irrespective of the identity of a particular offender or his membership of an ethnic or other group.…
Chinese mafia groups have infiltrated and corrupted the highest levels of Papua New Guinea’s police force, crippling the struggling nation’s attempts to tackle its law-and-order crisis and posing a potential…
In 1991-1992 the Research School of Social Sciences at ANU conducted a national survey of 1522 Australians and asked them about their attitude to rights. The report Rights in Australia…
In the Trobriand Islands the annual yam festival is more than just ordinary. Nick burst out laughing when I told him I was heading for the Trobriand Islands. “I hope…
Prime Minister Gillard signalled during a speech given to the Sydney Institute on Wednesday night that welfare reform was on her agenda, in a big way. "The social and economic…
Michael Anderson, the last survivor of the four 1972 founders of the Aboriginal embassy in Canberra and leader of the 3,000 Euahlayi, says in a media release that the New…
Clearly, with the expansion of the AFP under Mick Keelty and with the blessing of the Howard government, the AFP has morphed into something unrecognisable. It's forgotten its core business…
A cause doesn’t drive itself. It requires dedication, research and interrogation of facts to sift out the fiction, to find buried lies. That’s what I do. I search and question…
Well Robin, ya ain’t wrong, mate! Anglo-Saxon ‘Australians’ whilst superficially decent, hard working Christian folk who, whilst not regular church goers, none-the-less profess to a certain spirituality, are racist! All…
Mr Aripaea Salmon is the father of the girl at the centre of the Julian Moti sex tourism allegations, which were reignited by the Australian Federal Police nearly a decade…