Featured
Environment, Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Summer 2021, Peace, Social Justice
A fiery trifecta
We are in the midst of a fiery trifecta of crises: climate, covid, nuclear. They’re all connected, and all capable of great damage, and of great transformation. The climate crisis just keeps getting worse, as governments refuse to take the bold and necessary actions to limit global warming to 1.5%. This challenge has been sneaking up on us for more... Read More
Democracy, Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Summer 2021, Social Justice
Burning debate: Building consensus from the ashes
During the summer that preceded COVID, my family left me home alone and set off on the five-hour annual road trip to Nowa Nowa, not far from Lakes Entrance in East Gippsland. As flames spread across Victoria and New South Wales, my partner, daughter and son were evacuated the next day. When the area was declared safe, they returned home.... Read More
Culture, Environment, Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Summer 2021
A thesis, fire, and the telling of stories
In the summer of 2019-20, my view of the world was skewed by fire. At the tail end of a Masters in Sustainable Development, I was working on a thesis. Exploring the issue of climate change reportage meant that a pine table in our home was cluttered with books and research papers tackling the subject. Volumes on climate change and... Read More
Featured
Into the fire: Summer 2021 Edition call for contributions
We’re calling for contributions for our Summer 2021 edition of Green Agenda: On fire in politics and policy. Submit your short pitch to contribute to the debate on sustainability, social justice, peace and nonviolence, and democracy. This earth, I never damage. I look after. Fire is nothing, just clean up. When you burn, new grass coming up. That means good... Read More
Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Spring 2020
Where to from here? Imagining a post-Covid future
There are lots of people, elbows out, trying to shape what Australia’s post-Covid future looks like. Scott Morrison would have us double-down on gas, conveniently forgetting climate change remains an existential threat. Around the country, state governments have taken the opportunity to ramp up police power, investing in unprecedented police numbers, more equipment, more arrests. Investment in industries including public... Read More
Democracy, Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Spring 2020, Social Justice
‘Now is the time for bold decision making’: Senator Siewert on the lessons of 2020
What a strange year 2020 has been. We entered it under a fog of smoke with parts of the country barely able to breathe, and growing community anger as fires burned. The links were being made stronger than ever, the fires were due to climate change – surely there would finally be decisive action taken, surely there was no choice... Read More
Economy, Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Spring 2020, Social Justice
The trash economy: employment in the post-Covid era
On a landfill site outside the village of Kafr Lusin in northwest Syria, teenagers sort through the mountain of toxic household waste, looking for reusable plastic that can be traded for a few coins. At the Ars Electronica Centre in Linz, school children visiting the Machine Learning Studio work with tech trainers to learn how robots are programmed. These might... Read More
Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Spring 2020, Social Justice
The state of welfare: reimagining support in the wake of Covid-19
For too long, the state has used welfare to control the poor. This crisis is our chance to imagine a new system that embraces freedom. Australia’s crash into recession has pushed our welfare state into the spotlight. Hundreds of thousands of Australians have lost their jobs and whole regions have been forced to a standstill. We emerged from a national... Read More
Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Spring 2020, Social Justice
Mobile phones in immigration detention: capturing lessons for post-pandemic transformation?
With the onset of COVID-19, the fault lines of the status quo are becoming more and more visible across Australia and the world. Globally, as People of Color are disproportionately dying from COVID-19, the effects of concealed structures of racism are made visible. This truth is immediately apparent in Australia’s carceral settings. The unequal incarceration levels of Aboriginal and Torres... Read More
Economy, Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Spring 2020, Social Justice
A casual reflection on academia: before and after the pandemic
COVID-19 has thrown Australia’s university sector into crisis. For the past two decades, the tertiary education industry has expanded on the back of rising international student enrolments. However, the coronavirus pandemic, and the resultant border closures, have disconnected universities from these enrolments, one of their most significant revenue streams. Universities have been hard hit: Job losses have already commenced as... Read More
