LIMINAL

Like many around the world, I have this week found myself in dismay-driven prayer, heartfelt hope for the world to be better, safer. As a person of colour, it is deeply concerning that the alleged perpetrator in the Christchurch massacres is an Australian citizen espousing white-supremacy and publishing a manifesto of hate. The rise of right-wing hate ideology is indisputable. The Internet has helped the cause. Social media has made white-supremacists more visible and international. In small, bizarre and accumulative ways, a fear of Muslims, that objectifies them, has shown its ugly head online. Platforms including Facebook, Instagram and YouTube have not exercised as much moral authority as they should have. They have relied on pressure from individual governments, rather than being proactive from the get-go in self-managing and limiting hate-speech and the live-streaming of violence. I have long worried about social media’s hunger for gut-wrenching and gratuitous content; it...

Here’s the thing. A lot of people from Oprah down suspected Michael Jackson of pedophilia but he continued, while alive, to live with impunity. Finally two men have come forward to speak their truth and fulsomely. “ Leaving Neverland, ” the disturbing documentary that continues to make headlines around the world should surprise no one and yet Jackson’s tenacious fans will hold onto their version of the King of Pop, regardless. Like many of them, I grew up with Mowtown music. Thriller had been rocking the charts when, as a junior high school student, I celebrated my crush one school dress-up day. I wore a twist on the Billie Jean outfit; one white glove, a red jacket, a pair of shiny-fly glasses, white slacks and my mother's low-heeled leather loafers that promised to defy gravity on the dance floor. My hair was short, shiny and curly. My nose was itself. Over the years I lost interest in the star. By the time the first case of alleged child molestation was before a US court, ...

The government’s trying to scare us, which is odd because the one thing that is truly frightening it keeps trying to tell us isn’t a problem - calamitous climate change. There’s Medivac. Scary stuff! Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said our hospital waiting lists will be bumped out by refugees evacuated from offshore detention camps. Then there was the problem of violence by African-Australians in Melbourne, also pointed to by Dutton and ministers including Greg Hunt. Never mind that you are much more likely to be attacked (and killed if you are Melbourne woman) by someone who is not African (In fact, every week in Australia, a woman is killed by a current or former partner). Last week there was talk of recession. That’s what’s coming if Labor is elected. Ignore for the moment that figures released on Wednesday show we are already in a per-capita recession. The Prime Minister says Labor’s extra taxes on negative-gearers and people who receive share dividends without paying t...

I had the privilege of being selected for and participating in this year's Art Not Apart festival in Canberra. My contribution explored protest sites and the rise of inequality and racism. It's not easy keeping cool when your passionate about a good cause. Even progressives in the US determined to rally recently in support of a more inclusive society resorted to physical violence when confronting neo-Nazis. Confrontation of evil by the power of love with non-violent protest, as Martin Luther King wrote, is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom. But when you are invested in social reform and impacted by injustice, it ain't easy to keep cool, any time, any where. To read more, see headline image, go to: https://artnotapart.com/artist/2019/toni-hassan/

There was at least one bright spot on Capital Hill before parliamentarians flew out of Canberra last week. It was the passing of Australia’s first federal law to address modern slavery in the things we buy. The passage of the law was an exercise in genuine bipartisanship, with the most active Liberals being Western Australia’s Senator Linda Reynolds and Victorian member of parliament Chris Crewther, and the most active Labor members being Tasmania’s Senator Lisa Singh and Victoria’s Clare O’Neil. O'Neil and Reynolds, representing the major parties, collaborated primarily with Greens Senator Nick McKim, independents Tim Storer and Derryn Hinch, and members of the Centre Alliance. It wasn’t just the senate doing its job, but a strong and collaborative civil society too. We might be disgusted with the near-toxic levels of tribalism in the parliament and despair at its capacity to do good, but there is room for optimism. The Senate committee system generally works well. It wa...

So, one of the plotters who blew up the government of Malcolm Turnbull, Health Minister Greg Hunt, has ordered an inquiry into sleep. He reckons there’s a problem and a parliamentary committee is now looking into it. Sleep is a problem. It’s no small matter that four in every 10 Australians are not getting enough sleep on a regular basis. But has he looked in the mirror? Does he demand that his staff answer mobile phones all hours of the night and at the crack of dawn, or does he insist they get eight hours sleep per night? Does he answer radio and television calls for an interview before the sun is up? Or does he tell producers to remember that a tired minister is a less-functioning minister. He must know that the madness that engulfed the Coalition over the past few months, saw a lot of people lose a tonne of sleep. And for what? I happen to be writing a book about the smartphone age and its impact on families. It is clear that communication technologies are adversely a...

Within days of a government minister repaying obscene amounts billed for internet use we learnt this week that one in five Australians regularly struggles to afford food. The hunger relief organisation Foodbank categorised one in four of these people as having “very low food security”. It’s worst away from our cities, and when big bills arrive. Schools respond with volunteer-run breakfast clubs. There are about a dozen across Canberra and Queanbeyan, feeding more than 500 children. It's well established that disadvantage is typically experienced across many dimensions. Those dimensions cascade. There is a strong correlation between children going hungry, health complaints and poor education outcomes. Successive studies across many countries by global agency UNICEF show hungry children are also more likely to be bullied and will experience shame and exclusion because with little food at home, they feel less able to have friends over. An infant will typically be full of w...