Shameful (via Paige Taylor in The Australian): It will cost about $29 million over the next 20 months for independent observers to watch over young, unaccompanied asylum-seekers in Australia’s immigration detention camps. The figure is the nominal amount of a new contract between the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and the US-linked Maximus Solutions to…
Showing all posts tagged Australia
Footage of my 2012 PEN Free Voices lecture
I was invited this year to give the 2012 Sydney PEN “Free Voices” lecture on free speech, censorship and war. It was delivered at the Sydney Writer’s Festival in May and in Melbourne in June. ABC published an extract recently. Film footage of the Sydney event is now available. May you be provoked:
Why does Australian join every bloody US war? To be tough, really tough
In a new report by the US Studies Centre at Sydney University titled, Australia, the US, and the Vietnam and Iraq Wars: “Hound Dog, not Lapdog”, the findings are interesting: In this article, Maquarie University’s Lloyd Cox and the US Studies Centre’s associate professor in American politics Brendon O’Connor refute the portrayal of Australia as…
When “stopping the boats” is the worst refugee solution
Mark Goudkamp, from the Refugee Action Coalition, speaks to CNN and talks sense about asylum seekers:
#LeftTurn tackled by Socialist Alternative
The following review of #LeftTurn appears in Socialist Alternative by Tom O’Lincoln: Review:… Left Turn: political essays for the new left.Antony Loewenstein and Jeff Sparrow (eds), Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2012 Capitalism is complicated, and so are the challenges to it. So a book like… Left Turn, offering an array of agenda-setting arguments, is bound to be…
My 2012 PEN Free Voices lecture on free speech and why it matters
The following is published today as the lead piece by ABC’s The Drum: The two-hour drive from Islamabad to Peshawar is along a surprisingly smooth road. Mud-brick homes sit amongst lush, green fields. Police checkpoints are set up routinely to stop unwanted visitors. I am asked why I want to see the troubled Pakistani town…
ABCTV News 24’s The Drum on refugees and media troubles
I appeared last night on ABC TV’s The Drum (video here) alongside former Howard government minister Peter Reith and 2UE host John Stanley. The main issues were asylum seekers – I argued that neither major side of politics in Australia has any desire to alleviate suffering and seemingly prefer ways to privatise the system and…
#LeftTurn Sydney launch video
14 June saw the Sydney event for #LeftTurn with co-editor Jeff Sparrow and contributors Tad Tietze and Larissa Behrendt. Green Left TV came along: