Best of 2010

Bogans and their Flags

“In Australia we eat meat, drink beer and speak ****EN ENGLISH”. 

Happy New Year!!!

In a couple of hours I’ll be jumping on a plane for a month long holiday… hooray!

International Students

Gang Shen, a Chinese Journalist undertaking postgraduate studies in Australia cautions that nobody likes to feel like Frogs in the Melting Pot. Sue Ellson from the Newcomers Network challenges us to consider how we view International Students, Cash Cows or Lonely Hearts?

As Consultation Closes Debate on Australian Human Rights Act Heats Up

At 12:30pm today (Wednesday 14 October 2009) The Committee Chair Fr Frank Brennan will address the National Press Club on the findings of the National Human Rights Consultation.

Fr Brennan says in his introduction to the final report, “Never before has a public consultation generated so much interest: the Committee received more than 35 000 submissions”.

Even so, as with most public consultations it has attracted criticism for not being genuinely representative, but in this case the Committee deserves a nod for their impressive effort to genuinely gauge community sentiment.

Broadband Reform: Be Heard

A major hindrance to the effectiveness of government-run public consultations is that most of us often have no idea just how much we actually care until it's too late.

Tweeting for Good

Philanthropy needs a cool image, and if Hugh Jackman can help build that, then more power to him.

We Can All Fund Quality Journalism

Buyers beware, lest by the time we’re sick of bingeing on trash the alternatives are scarce.  

Are Australian newspapers dying? If so, are they taking quality journalism down with them? Does it matter? Are government subsidies or philanthropy the answer?

Nutritionists draw a food pyramid to illustrate a balanced diet. We all know what our ideal diet should look like. Yet our society has an obesity epidemic because as a mass we swallow too much cheap, convenient, seductively marketed junk. It’s bad for our health and it makes it difficult for smaller producers of quality healthy food to survive.

Our consumption of media is much the same.  When we prefer to read about a reality TV star over the results of a parliamentary inquiry, we choose to finance a particular type of media product. Even when we are consuming it for free, we are part of the financial transaction.

Does Age Absolve Guilt?

No, I don't believe it does and there's a popular perception to the contrary which disturbs me greatly.

Women’s Day, blink and you miss it

If you think International Women's Day is an irrelevance, then you probably have the most cause for celebration.

International Women's Day seems to have lost its nerve. It was Sunday, but you might have missed it.

This year I didn't see a single woman out and about donning the green and purple and spied only the most cursory mention of it in the weekend papers, as an aside in a report of an alleged sexual assault; hardly inspiring stuff.

Perhaps it is because younger women no longer feel the day is relevant to them or maybe it has just slipped so far off the radar of social consciousness that they aren't even aware of the day's significance. 

Let’s Splash Cash on Elvis

The best way to express our gratitude to volunteer services would be to ease some of their burden by not relying on them so heavily. 

Australia Day by any other name

It is still possible to "celebrate what's great" without denying what ain't.

Australian of the Year Mick Dodson is absolutely right that we "need to have a conversation" about what it means for us as a society that we celebrate Australia Day on January 26th, a "day of mourning" for Indigenous Australia.  However, it's doubtful changing our National Day to a different date would help that conversation develop or provide any healing.

Changing the date would be revisionist and revisionist history is a bad idea. The current issue is that people want to gloss over the fact that 26 January is the anniversary of a colonial invasion, but if we move the date then a few decades from now it might be even easier for people to gloss over that important fact in our foundation story all together.