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Culture, Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Autumn 2021, Peace, Social Justice
Government’s secrecy war makes us less safe
When the Australian government announced in April last year that they would be developing and deploying a smartphone application to assist contract tracing efforts as the coronavirus pandemic started to impact Australia, there was immediate and vocal public scepticism. It came from privacy advocates and the technology sector, but also human rights advocates and the broader public. The trickle of... Read More
Economy, Environment, Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Autumn 2021
Security for the Big Polluters: Plantation forestry for carbon offset delays action on climate
There is now growing acceptance – even amongst some of the most ardent of once anti-environmentalists – on the need for urgent action to curb global greenhouse gas emissions, stabilise the earth’s atmosphere, and limit the worst effects of global climate chaos. At the United Nations climate negotiations, a disparate group of nation states, First Nations, civil society, and along... Read More
Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Autumn 2021, Social Justice
Has COVID-19 made women more insecure at home?
In early 2020 I got stuck in New York as the world came to grips with the COVID pandemic. I had been supporting a group of Aboriginal and Pacific First Nations women who went there to tell their story and build relationships internationally, in their work to end violence against First Nations women. Over the month, I watched the city... Read More
Economy, Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Autumn 2021, Social Justice
Housing security – do we really understand the challenge?
In the six years I was in the flat, my rent had risen from $300 to $415 a week. Some of this reflected the market, but increasingly the condition of the flat did not reflect the rent… After three months of soggy and ruined food, I finally asked for a rent reduction. No response. So, I asked for compensation. No... Read More
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(In)security: Autumn 2021 Edition call for contributions
We’re calling for contributions for our Autumn 2021 edition of Green Agenda: on security and insecurity in politics and policy. Submit your short pitch to contribute to the debate on sustainability, social justice, peace and nonviolence, and democracy. The notion of security has been used and abused across almost every area of political debate and policy in Australia. Successive governments... Read More
Environment, Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Summer 2021, Social Justice
Green Agenda Summer 2021: Into the Fire
As I sit in my study writing this piece, I look outside to the trees in our street and the clean Canberra air. It is a far cry from what it was like just over a year ago. From November 2019 to February 2020 our beautiful city was shrouded in smoke. With fires to our north, east and west, we... Read More
Democracy, Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Summer 2021, Social Justice
The fire front: Transformative politics in Queensland
Queensland bears a burden of being perceived as a deeply conservative state. One Nation emerged from the ashes in a small Queensland city called Ipswich, a coal town left in ruin once the mining moved further West. We carry the history of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era, and a violent history of colonisation and policing. We’re also home to some of... Read More
Culture, Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Summer 2021
Facebook lets the world burn
It was never going to go well. Attempting to prop up the media sector while reigning in the tech giants with one bill was always going to be chaotic, but even then, the impact of Facebook’s Australian news content ban last Thursday was more widespread than almost anyone anticipated. The government passed their revised News Media Bargaining Code through the... Read More
Culture, Environment, Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Summer 2021
Fire and fiction: Reading and learning empathy and connection through bushfire fiction
On both sides of the Pacific Ocean, 2020 will be remembered as the year that a new kind of wildfire burned across the pyrophytic landscapes of south-east Australia and the western United States. Twelve months down the line, the figures are still hard to comprehend; Australia’s Black Summer bushfire season killed or displaced more than 3 billion animals, and destroyed... Read More
Featured, Green Agenda Quarterly Journal Summer 2021, Peace, Social Justice
Beirut burning
Some of the worst wildfires ravaged through the mountains of Lebanon in 2019, caused by extended drought, wind and unusually dry weather. The government’s response to this crisis mirrored every government service in the country, at best inadequate, and mostly non-existent. In 2020 more than 100 wildfires spread again throughout the mountains in the southern Chouf and in the northern... Read More
