Bob Hawke

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Australia’s most popular prime minister, Bob Hawke, tried to deliver a treaty with Aboriginal people back in 1988. Bob Hawke and a promise of Aboriginal treaty. He was unsuccessful because he could not get bipartisan support for a treaty from his colleagues back in Canberra. John Howard opposed the idea of a treaty in 1988 and remains opposed to the Voice today. What is the common theme here? Liberal Party of Australia leaders opposing official recognition of First Nation’s Australians. Peter Dutton carries that conservative racist flag today. The idea that all Aboriginal people should fall into line with a modern European/British conception of what it means to be Australian is called assimilation.Continue Reading

Political puppet master png sticker

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Australians need to ask themselves whether they want an extreme right wing media organisation intent on creating division at the heart of our media landscape. Time to get Murdoch press out of Australia. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is the company behind Fox News, a blatant propaganda machine for right wing politics that was recently sued for peddling false information to its viewers. Fox settled for a billion dollars; money is the only measure of justice in America. Sky News Australia is modelled on Fox News and peddles the same vitriolic lies about centre-left politics downunder. The Australian newspaper, similarly, provides unbalanced editorial skewered to the hard right. Climate change deniers thrive inside News Corp’s programs and papers. Murdoch controls every tabloid newspaper in every state of Australia and they all toe the hard conservative line.Continue Reading

Sticky
flag of australia

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If institutional injustice makes you mad this episode had it in spades. Robodebt: What the Royal Commission revealed to us. A government and a bunch of ministers who saw themselves as ‘welfare cops’, with a duty to shake down the most vulnerable among us. Without fear or favour these sheriffs took on pensioners, disabled Australians, and those down on their luck. They applied income averaging to make it look like these people on the bones of their arse were rorting the system. It played well to those who are always looking for someone to blame for their own financial frustrations. Continue Reading

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The Greek Chorus, for those who don’t know, was a device employed in traditional Greek theatre and defined as “the chorus in Classical Greek drama was a group of actors who described and commented upon the main action of a play with song, dance, and recitation.” That seems pretty close to what we find the media doing in today’s world. Stories are ramped up, endlessly repeated, drilled down into, and brought to the attention of the consumer of news and media. Editors and producers direct journalists toward issues and stories that have the potential to engage the interest of the viewer and reader. The more salacious a story or event may be the greater the public’s appetite for it. The media as Greek chorus of the modern world seems a good fit in more ways than one.Continue Reading

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In comparison with questions about the Two State Solution in Israel my home entertainment provider consumer journey may pale into insignificance, but it is my journey just the same. Going from Foxtel to Netflix on my consumer journey has shown me certain things about the industry and myself. I drewContinue Reading