I appeared again last night on ABC TV News 24 The Drum with former politician Kerry Chikarovski and ABC journalist Chris Uhlmann (previous appearances here). The show is available here. We discussed Australia’s role in Afghanistan and whether the country should maintain troops there. It appears that the US alliance and “national security” reasons are…
Showing all posts tagged Australia
The slow curse of disaster capitalism covers the world
I recently wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald about the ever-increasing arrival of the Shock Doctrine in Australia and Asia-Pacific. Privatisation running riot. George Monbiot writes about the same problems facing Britain: We’ve been staring at the wrong list. In an effort to guess what will hit us tomorrow, we’ve been trying to understand the…
This is what our asylum seeker policy looks like
While Australia releases some families from immigration detention into the community yet builds more facilities to imprison refugees, a foreign journalist visits the country and finds a privatised and largely unaccountable system away from the prying eyes of average citizens. Just as the government wants it to be.
More on Tony Abbott mixing with the “enemy” in Sydney
After attending a Sydney event last night with Liberal Opposition leader Tony Abbott and writer Bob Ellis (with actor Rhys Muldoon in my photo above), today’s ABC Radio AM reported on proceedings: ELIZABETH JACKSON: Politics throws up some unlikely friendships. Indeed it’s hard to imagine a more unusual friendship than the one between the Labor…
Keeping kids behind bars has become the Australian way
With news that Australia may soon release a number of families and children from immigration detention to live in the community while their claims are processed, Mary Crock, Professor of Public Law at the University of Sydney, says how isolated our policy really is: What strikes me is how unaware we are of what other…
Meeting Tony Abbott in Sydney and shooting the Palestinian breeze
Last night I attended an event in central Sydney at Gleebooks with Leader of the Liberal Opposition Tony Abbott and writer and speech-writer Bob Ellis. The room was packed with around 200 people and the two men initially talked about the war in Afghanistan (Abbott backs it, “the best of the worst options” for the…
Australian unions recognise the power and necessity of BDS
Now this is news, a growing realisation that the status-quo in Palestine is simply oppressing Palestinians. Civil society is rising: Australian unions are signing up to an international campaign to boycott Israeli goods. But a fight is brewing over a proposal for the Australian Council of Trade Unions to endorse the movement. The broad-based divestment…
What Indians may think of Australia and it’s not entirely positive
A new Indian film, Crook – It’s Good to be Bad, that examines the racial violence against Indian students in Australia. If many in Australia remain in denial about the problem, don’t be surprised that many in India will react accordingly:
Moving forward? Australia’s relationship with Israel is dire
My following lead essay appears in the Australian literary journal Kill Your Darlings: I first discovered the importance of the Israel/Palestine conflict in my early teens, in Melbourne. I remember sitting around the Sabbath table with my parents and cousins, discussing the events of the week as we consumed schnitzels, soggy vegetables and chicken soup.…