Whatever specific findings the Robodebt Royal Commission makes, the main outlines of the story are now clear. Between 2015 and 2019, the Coalition government, keen to make savings, undertook a data matching exercise with the Tax Office and Centrelink, designed to flush out welfare fraud. The government was convinced many …
As humans, we are prisoners of the frames we use for bounding and understanding reality. Despite abundant evidence that we need to reconsider, the world’s obsession with economic growth continues. If our economies do not grow we are convinced they must, by definition, be declining. Even climate change has not …
I wish I could write more about grieving, but as others have found, by the time you are conscious of having moved through a stage, another has come upon you – or memories you thought had passed, re-invent themselves, over and over again.
The end days came so quickly. For months, the doctors kept saying there was something wrong with his heart. But it was the cancer, so laboriously excised, that had come back. Or perhaps it never left.
Just as viruses mutate, so does language. Have you noticed how rapidly the use of the preposition is changing in Australian English?
It’s said that every generation has misgivings about the next. I know I do. It’s probably a natural part of growing older. Not only do the young seem younger than ever before, but those in charge, those now in their forties and fifties, seem, in ways both mysterious and self-evident, …
Christianity is for believers, right? This is certainly the message that Christians send to those outside the church. Christians of all denominations project their faith through liturgy, song and prayer. The message, whether stated through the recitation of creedal liturgies or not, is unmistakable: ‘I believe, I believe, I believe’. …
If you are a fan of British comedy, you will no doubt recall that memorable episode of Fawlty Towers, when Basil, the crazed Torquay hotel-keeper played by John Cleese, welcomes some German guests. The more Basil tries not to mention the war, the more obsessed with it he becomes, …
The first time I missed out on promotion (a type of prize, I guess), a wise old academic said to me that it was always tempting to reject a system that had rejected you. It’s a fair point. Any committee that selects oneself, shows startling sagacity. One that does …
I was talking to some friends the other day about spiritual discipline – not the sort that involves self-mortification – but the kind of practice that enables us to communicate within, and without. Reading William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience has been a great help to me in understanding a …
To end up as a Christian is to swim against the Australian tide. Most of my contemporaries have, with varying degrees of relief, jettisoned religion. I respect their reasons for doing so. But my experience may, possibly, suggest a way back.
I have never known an organisation that would not have been improved by a few well-judged changes. Not, I hasten to add, re-structurings or purges, just the addition of a bit of common sense to the pot pourri of accepted practice.
