LIMINAL

Vested interests have always sought to influence politicians but the problem of buying influence has in recent time developed into a cancer undermining the health of Australia’s democracy. Mining industry influence is a key example. The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has analysed a dump of 2018-19 donations data on the Australian Electoral Commission’s (AEC) website. It found that the fossil-fuel industry doubled its donations to the major parties the past four years. The Coalition gets the lion’s share, but the amount Labor is ‘gifted’ is not far behind, certainly not insignificant. Drawing on four years of data from 2015-2016 to last financial year, the ACF confirms that the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) gave money to both Liberal and Nationals-aligned entities as well as Labor entities. MCA donated to the Hunter Federal Campaign Account of the Australian Labor Party, an electorate in coal country that was retained last year by Labor’s pro-coal MP Joel Fitzgibbo...

In the wake of the South Coast fires that ravaged Mogo and Cobargo and other towns, are stories about the lamentable loss of Aboriginal heritage sites. When sympathetically raised with an Aboriginal leader, I was reminded that all Australians lost sites that mattered to them. Whether it's pilgrim huts in the Alpine region, shell middens on the coast, or species brought to the brink of extinction, the bushfire carnage represents a shared loss, and one that can never fully be measured in dollars. Across cultures, there is a deep sadness that children will not enjoy places of historic and natural beauty in the same way that their parents and elders did, recognising that all of us have spiritual connections to place. The bushfire disaster and this coming weekend's Australia Day both happen to fall in the Christian season of "epiphany", a word which for Christians refers to the revelation or appearance of Christ, and in more common usage refers to a sudden and stri...

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I've been glued to the news for days, restless, easily distracted, feeling helpless. I want to stay informed but at times, it's too much. A bloke on the south coast of New South Wales said, ‘It was like world war three’. With rising anxiety, the threat of losing the lot, blackened daytime skies and scared small children wearing masks and adults holding their breath, it was. The enemy, fire, has been acting for months but the last few days have been truly frightening. These are difficult times, hours that have challenged and tested the very rhythm of everyday life - at a time of year when most of us are on holiday, usually snatching time for rest and play. These days have demanded leaders with empathy, respect and wisdom. Monday this week, exactly twelve days after Christmas is known as the Epiphany. It remembers the journey of the Magi - the three wise men - to Bethlehem. Many of us have had our own very personal epiphanies this season; searing experiences that have...

Australian students are continuing to slide in international performance tables, with ACT students going down about as fast as (but typically still doing better than) those in the rest of Australia. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development conducts its Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) survey of performance in reading, maths and science every three years. It finds that although the performance of Australian students is close to the OECD average, unusually among developed countries, Australia's performance has been getting worse over time. Should it worry us? That depends partly on what we think will be needed for living in and surviving the rest of the century. There's no necessary reason to think it will be maths and science as we've known them. Machines might do those things for us. But a mid-year report by Deloitte Access Economics finds employment has been growing fastest among the least routine jobs, the ones that machines ca...

It was always going to be a challenge, even with the signatures of thousands of doctors and advocacy by health groups, to keep Medevac. On Capital Hill, hearts have been hardened towards refugees over time, for so long. With help from Labor, the Coalition has entrenched a harsh offshore prison system that has created profound sickness. In his stunning memoir of time spent on Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea, Kurdish Iranian journalist, Behrouz Boochani, describes the extraordinary lengths detainees must go through to get any basic care. There are arbitrary rules and forms to fill out just to have a toothache seen to, knowing all along that there are no dentists on the island for detainees. It would be absurd and comical if it wasn’t so serious and cruel. Other rules, like excluding games and music, squeezing the agency and hope of people who had arrived on Manus and Nauru relatively well, piled up without any logic. People went mad with pain with no light reli...

Not turning my child into a zombie with no friends (but lots of likes) by Devin Bowles  Toni Hassan’s Families in the Digital Age: Every parent’s guide is an invitation to deep thought and  dialogue about the effect of social media and pervasive smart phones on our children. My interest in  this book was initially captured because I am a father, and this book should be mandatory reading  for all Australian parents. Before long, Hassan convinced me that the public health implications are  profound. This hugely important topic has gone largely unnoticed, in part because personal digital  technologies have rapidly become so integrated with our lives that they do not invite comment or  introspection. There are no ‘digital natives’, even if younger generations have been given that label. As a species,  we evolved brains that grow and change based on our environments. Our brains develop as they  should only when environments and stimuli are right....