Featured
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
Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Spring 2020, Social Justice
Unions and worker’s rights in the pandemic: an interview with Godfrey Moase
Simon Copland: I want to just start off with a really broad question, which is how do you think COVID-19 has changed the way that unions operate in this past year? Godfrey Moase: COVID-19 has really increased the prominence of organising around safety for unions, and also safety more generally as a set of issues for workers. With COVID-19 coming basically... Read More
Featured
In A Time Of Transformation, We’re Going Quarterly
Times are changing around the world, and Green Agenda is following suit. We’re excited to announce that we’re moving to a quarterly online journal model. Each season, you’ll receive a suite of new pieces, interviews, and a webinar, unified around a curated theme. We want to kick off a collective conversation and make connections across different issues, policy areas, and... Read More
Economy, Featured, Social Justice
How Much Does a Basic Income Cost?
When discussing the topic of a Basic Income, the cost of the program is often people’s first question. After all, if the program were to deliver “an unconditional livable wage to every permanent resident” when the Henderson poverty line is ~$24,000/year and the population of Australia is ~24,600,000, back of the envelope calculations cost a Basic Income at approximately $590,000,000,000/year!... Read More
Featured, Peace
Criminalisation And Covid-19
On Saturday July 4th Daniel Andrews’ government announced on national television that there would be a hard lockdown of Melbourne’s nine public housing towers, effective immediately. As his announcement (presumably for the benefit of Melbournians not living in the public housing estates) streamed into living rooms around the country, armed police streamed into the homes of residents in the Kensington,... Read More
