July, 2009

The shambles engulfing Australia’s international students continues to bubble along. Even worse, publicity about it continues to bubble along overseas, especially in Indian media. There are now reports that the education sector is trying to crack down on so-called ‘rogue education agents’.  It’s hard to see how that achieves anything more than window dressing.  The [...]

On Tuesday night, July 28, around 300 people filled the Brisbane Room in Brisbane’s City Hall to hear speakers from the front line of climate change – residents of the Torres Strait and Pacific Island nations Tuvalu, Micronesia and Kiribati.  It’s very rare for me to attend a forum with seven speakers all addressing the [...]

That Tony Abbott certainly is a curious chap. I usually have some respect for people who are generally willing to say what they think, even when I disagree with them.  Yesterday, he was reported calling for the age pension age to be lifted to 70, rather than the government’s current plan to lift it just to [...]

No doubt President Obama will disappoint plenty of people in plenty of areas before his time as President finishes, but one area where he seems keen to make improvements is in the way the USA approaches human rights issues internationally. Last Friday he “announced his intention to sign the U.N. Convention on the Rights of [...]

If you are only going to read one thing about how Australia’s federal Parliament works – and more importantly how it doesn’t work – read this fabulous piece by the long-standing Clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans. Among many things, he highlights the fact that the supposed ‘Westminster system’ we are repeatedly told Australia has, [...]

Saying sorry doesn’t magically fix injustices, past or present – a point which is often made in respect of the Parliamentary apology to the Stolen Generations.  It is true that apologising for past wrongs won’t in itself address present problems, but this fact doesn’t validate the view that formal apologies serve no purpose or have [...]

The irrational obsession with pulling out all stops to prevent asylum seekers arriving by boat in Australia is placing our country at risk of being party to human rights abuses on refugees much worse than those of the Howard era. This week , the federal government is taking the unusual step of having the Prime [...]

Last Thursday night, I was able to get along to Avid Reader bookshop in Brisbane to hear Malalai Joya speak at a launch of her new book – Raising My Voice.  Ms Joya is often described as the bravest woman in Afghanistan. Being a women’s rights activist under the Taliban would certainly take some guts. [...]

As President Obama works slowly on reforms such removing the counter-productive and discriminatory ban on openly gay and lesbian people in the US military, some positive news has come from India, where a Court has ruled that a law criminalising consensual sex between two people of the same gender breaches India’s Constitution. Ironically, the law [...]