An Austrian film called The Trouble with Being Born is winning high praise from critics at film festivals. It received a special jury award at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year. On Rotten Tomatoes, it scores 100% amongst critics. It’s a “hidden gem”, according to Hollywood Reporter. “A powerful and revelatory achievement,” wrote a critic for Screen […]
An investigation by Sky News Australia into bias shown by Facebook’s ‘fact-checkers’ has revealed that one of the leading academics assessing who can become a fact-checker for the online platform, Prof Margot Susca, is a liberal activist. She also signed-off on the Irish platform, TheJournal.ie, becoming a supposedly unbiased checker of facts for the platform. Digital […]
With an aging population, and new retirement homes popping up everywhere it seems, caring for the elderly with dignity will continue to be a big issue. A recent report in the Lancet notes: “In 2016, there were 366,000 people working to support 1.2 million older Australians. By 2050, we will need 980,000 workers to care for 7.5 […]
Four newborn babies in Adelaide have died after being denied life-saving heart surgery because it wasn’t available locally and the stage-four lockdown in Victoria meant they couldn’t be transferred to Melbourne for surgery. Covid-19 travel restrictions meant that interstate transfers for the sick babies who needed life-saving cardiac surgery wasn’t possible. The surgery was not […]
Every nation cherishes an image of itself. In Australia, we are often told that ours was formed on the beaches of Gallipoli, but it’s older and more complex than that. Long before the Australian union, the people of each of the Australian colonies developed self-images of their own, in great variety. Few directly referred to […]
The conclusions of Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse are seldom questioned. But the perspective which underpinned the work of the Royal Commission is indifferent, if not hostile, to religious belief. Jane Adolphe and Ronald J. Rychlak help to remedy that deficiency in the splendid study which they have edited, Clerical Sexual Misconduct: an […]
In the eyes of many around the world the COVID experience of Australia and New Zealand has been a relatively benign one. But as I mentioned last week (here and here) New Zealand is going to have to deal with some significant demographic headwinds in the years ahead due to the pandemic. Now, it seems as if […]
30 whales are said to be still alive, with focus now turning to saving as many of them possible.
“They rammed him with the car. He flew about three metres in the air. It’s just horrendous.”
Victoria police have arrested a 27-year-old former soldier for allegedly promoting anti-lockdown protests in Melbourne, Australia.
The arrest of a pregnant woman in her home in front of her children for posting an anti-lockdown event has caused outrage in Australia and abroad. Zoe Buhler, a 28 year old resident of Ballarat, Victoria was preparing to go for an ultrasound when masked police officers entered her home and said they were arresting her […]
A continent-sized land mass on the other side of the world might not seem like an obvious target for a comparative analysis. Australia’s glorious weather and the diversity of its often-terrifying wildlife also set it apart. As does the bloody-minded optimism of its natives which, while perhaps an evolved response to both of the aforementioned […]