Minister for Aboriginal affairs Jenny Macklin will move in March to restore the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) in the Northern Territory. But the move has been described by Aboriginal advocates as a cynical ploy.
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February 7, 2009, Black Saturday: you’re glued to your TV watching an inferno devour Victoria’s bushland, terrified that in a country like Australia, such a fire could have happened anywhere.February 7, 2009, Black Saturday: you're glued to your TV watching an inferno devour Victoria's bushland, terrified that in a country like Australia, such a fire could have happened anywhere. Burning with the force of 1500 Hiroshima bombs, the fires tore their way through 450,000 hectares of land — burning them to a crisp, along with anything or anyone unfortunate enough to be trapped in its path.
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When, after destroying Malcolm Turnbull, the Liberal Party took a surprise turn and embraced Tony Abbott as leader, there were those on the left who greeted the news with combined incredulity and glee.
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There can be no National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy tests in 2010. The Australian Education Union’s national conference in January reaffirmed that, if NAPLAN data was used by the media to publish league tables, teachers would not co-operate in implementing the tests this year.
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Optimistic about Cuba Cuba is supposed to be a dangerous communist country. I spent January in this Caribbean island about the size of Victoria and suffering a trade embargo. My mobile phone stopped working at the US border. What about climate
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Richard Downs is a spokesperson for the Alyawarr people from the Ampilatwatja community in the Northern Territory. Last year, he travelled the country on a speaking tour to publicise the situation for Aboriginal people in the NT since the 2007 NT Emergency Response legislation (known as the NT intervention) was brought in by the previous Coalition government. Under the intervention laws, the military was sent into Aboriginal communities.
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James and Erica Packer have just had a baby. Luckily this time it's a boy.
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It seems bizarre that when the science of human-caused climate change is more worryingly conclusive than ever, climate denial could enjoy a resurgence. After all, no climate denier has published a peer-reviewed article in a scientific journal in the past 15 years.
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On February 2, opposition leader Tony Abbott released the Liberal-National Coalition’s climate policy. For the Coalition, just as for the Rudd government, there’s one thing that’s irrelevant to climate policy — climate science. In Abbott’s 30-page document, the global warming crisis doesn’t rate one mention.
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Increased interest rates, declining working hours and stagnating wages are still chipping away at working people’s living standards, despite small falls in the official unemployment rate in November and December.
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Immigrants to the developed world have frequently been blamed for unemployment, crime and other social ills. Attempts to reduce or block immigration have been justified as necessary measures to protect “our way of life” from alien influences.
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In the lead-up to “Australia Day” on January 26, former TV host Ray Martin restarted a debate about the need to change the Australian flag.