Social Justice | The Monthly

William Kentridge

No Script, No Storyboard

By Sebastian Smee

“What times are these,” wrote Bertolt Brecht in his poem, ‘To Those Born After’, “when a talk about trees is almost a crime because it implies silence on so many wrongs?” Brecht’s grim point – that an appreciation of nature, beauty and art can feel criminally negligent in times of political crisis – is well taken. His famous lament was written in the late 1930s, as Hitler wa

The Case for a National Disability Insurance Scheme

Two Nations

By Anne Manne

Seven years ago, while bathing in a private backyard pool, she was terribly injured when a 90 kilogram man accidentally fell on her. The muscles were stripped from her spine, leaving nerve signals but no muscles to translate them. At age 31, Lillian was told she would have to spend the rest of her days in a nursing home. Through grit, hard work at rehabilitation and sheer determination she fi

Gough Whitlam at 95 Years

Comment

By Lindsay Tanner

Many books have been written about the political drama of the Whitlam years, particularly the government’s ultimate dismissal by Governor-General Sir John Kerr on 11 November 1975. Yet the actual content of the government’s initiatives also warrants serious analysis. There has been a great deal of subsequent commentary about specific issues, but few serious studies of the government itself have been produced. Whitlam’s own book, T

Kristina Keneally

A Matter of Faith

By Jana Wendt

The office of the premier in the state of despair is occupied by Kristina Kerscher Keneally of Ohio. More improbable than the fact that an American-born woman should become NSW premier is that, from the moment she moved in, the “beyond sullen” citizens liked her. They took to her despite the fact that, on the face of it, her promotion after fewer than se

From the Chrysalis

By Don Watson

FIRST PUBLISHED IN JUNE 2010. It was a bad night for neo-cons, neo-liberals and neo-Hobbesians, the last being those wiseacres in and around the now-crumbled Bush administration who had been inclined to justify the “muscular unilateralism” of recent Americ

Faith Bandler & Paul Robeson

By Shane Maloney

Money was tight when Faith Bandler was growing up in Murwillumbah in the early 1930s, but her two older brothers managed to save a portion of their wages to buy records. Paul Robeson was a favourite and the family would all sing along. At 17, Faith sneaked awa

Noel Pearson’s "Up from the Mission"

Here I Stand

By Peter Sutton

Most Australians probably know Noel Pearson in just one or two of his aspects: as the regional leader, lawyer and activist from Cape York Peninsula, or as the national media commentator on Indigenous policy and politics. But his complexities, his gifts and possibly his

Paul Kelly’s "Songs from the South"

Thoughts in the Middle of a Career

By Robert Forster

It can seem futile trying to chase down biographical material on Paul Kelly because, just as he's ducked the glare of mainstream pop stardom, his self-effacement and unease with his past have left the songs to sketch the details, a situation he probably feels

The Global Financial Crisis

By Kevin Rudd

There is a sense that we are now living through just such a time: barely a decade into the new millennium, barely 20 years since the end of the Cold War and barely 30 years since the triumph of neo-liberalism - that particular brand of free-market fundamentalism, extrem

Life Under Fiji’s Interim Government

Coup-Coup Land

By Craig Sherborne

Even the funeral parlours here are caged, as if there's profitable trade in pawning corpses. In shop windows, houses are advertised for lease as having a "good compound, fully fenced all over and with full security system." And security guards. Fiji has more s

Inside New Zealand’s social laboratory

Not All Black & White

By Craig Sherborne

If you think Australia and New Zealand are peas in a pod, you are mistaken.In social justice, New Zealand has, for most of its modern history, been advancing the lantern into the future's blank mist, where Australia has been hesitant to venture. In indigenous

Consuming the Planet

Comment

By Clive Hamilton

Australians go into the federal election affluent and, on the surface, satisfied. Signs of prosperity are everywhere. Yet in a culture now defined by the idea of lifestyle, aspirations continue to rise ahead of incomes. A number of interest-rate rises and warnings (admi