health
health
health April 4, 2020
Coalition’s seismic economic shift
The earth moved on Monday, when the coronavirus pandemic opened up a wide chasm between Australia’s governing Coalition and its political substructure. Don’t take my word for it, take the prime minister’s: “We are living in unprecedented times with...
health March 28, 2020
Over the past 18 years or so we’ve had periodic public health warnings about one or another bad bug that’s out to get us. In 2002-03, there was severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-1), H5N1 bird flu in 2002, the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009...
health March 28, 2020
Government’s crashing failure in face of crisis
If anything crystallises the brutal impact of the coronavirus crisis in Australia, it is the thousands queued outside Centrelink offices around the country this week. The lines began forming the day after the prime minister announced that vast...
health March 21, 2020
How Australia can avoid economic collapse in the wake of Covid-19
For decades, Australians have been sold an imagined poverty. We have been told we need to “rein in” government spending – that if we want to spend more on health or education, we will need to spend less on the age pension or childcare. The Coalition...
health March 21, 2020
Morrison’s coronavirus awakening
There in the prime ministerial courtyard of Parliament House, Scott Morrison finally admitted his world had crumbled. “Life is changing in Australia, as it is changing all around the world,” he began his news conference midweek. “Life is going to...
health March 14, 2020
Morrison announces ‘Team Australia’ stimulus
The coronavirus-induced panic that has caused the great run on toilet paper is not confined to the herd instinct of millions of shoppers. Fear of being the first government to preside over the end of 30 years of uninterrupted growth is gripping...
environment February 29, 2020
Scott Morrison’s quest for immunity
There’s an old saying in politics, “Never waste a good crisis.” And it’s crystal clear Scott Morrison isn’t wasting any moment where he can be seen responding to the threat coronavirus – or COVID-19, as it’s now known – is posing to Australia and...
immigration February 8, 2020
Christmas Island and the rise of mandatory detention
While most political observers were focused on the leadership machinations playing out in the ranks of the Nationals and Greens on Monday, Australia’s director of human biosecurity issued the dryly named Biosecurity (Human Health Response Zone) (...
immigration November 30, 2019
It’s hard to believe, but here we are again. The dying days of parliament for 2019 and we’re back in Canberra fighting for medical care for refugees. This time last year we were here too, lobbying to get the last remaining kids off Nauru, for the...
health November 2, 2019
Who else but that old master of political imagery Paul Keating could sum it all up so colourfully? The Australian economy is stagnant, and he says the Morrison government can’t do anything about it because the Liberal Party has a “surplus virus” in...
law & crime October 26, 2019
I don’t know from where to start; how to speak the unspeakable? It is important for me to share my thoughts about the loss of my beautiful daughter, Aiia, but English is not my first language and I struggle to express my thoughts. To the people of...
