As violence escalates in West Papua, Indonesian political leaders have again turned to the military to address what is, at base, a political issue while West Papuan leaders call for dialogue without response. Neither approach is likely to be any more successful at ending the conflict than they have been for the past half century. […]
Category Archives: Community
As Covid-19 continues to ravage much of the world, Australia is stepping up to assist its near neighbors in their fight against the virus. After several years of falling aid spending, last October’s announcement of $500 million over three years for Covid-19 vaccines on top of an earlier $300 million commitment indicates that Australia is […]
As the world looks on, seemingly helplessly, the Myanmar military – Tatmadaw – continues its campaign of violence to repress protests aimed at restoring the country’s fledgling democracy. Despite a proposed pause, with the Tatmadaw saying they will only respond to events that undermine broadly conceived security, the protests are likely to continue and the […]
On Facebook and the news media: the real question is about how to retain quality journalism, or what’s left of it, in a time when advertising revenue has deserted ‘legacy’ media. In terms of Facebook benefiting from legacy media being posted on its platform, yes, it’s (a small) part of the mix. However, all those […]
Myanmar’s recent military coup was a shock, especially for subscribers to the view that democracy is inevitable. But it was not, for anyone who has watched the country, a surprise. The country’s National League for Democracy (NLD, headed by the revered Aung San Suu Kyi, recorded a strong, 60 per cent, majority in the country’s […]
When I awoke before dawn on the day of Myanmar’s 2015 elections – the first more or less free elections in over five decades – my sense as an election observer team leader was the day would unfold as a happy occasion helping transition the country towards a better future, or there would be a […]
Watching the US 2020 elections, some election observers have started to apply the lens to it they have previously reserved for emerging and fragile democracies. As a former model for the rest of the world, that the US electoral process should even be open to such scrutiny is a mark of how much has changed […]
Re the Kerr Letters, in response to a friend who said former G-G John Kerr’s principle failure was in not informing the Queen of having sacked Australian PM Whitlam, my reply: There is absolutely nothing in parliamentary convention, much less the Constitution, which even remotely suggest the G-G can or should canvass advice from the […]
Working for the world: the evolution of Australian Volunteers International Peter Britton Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne If two approaches can be said to reflect many Australians’ approach to assisting others, they are probably volunteerism and working with communities. It was this approach which characterized Australia’s Volunteer Graduate Scheme (VGS), which from the early 1950s pioneered […]
For a country which gave the world the word ‘serendipity’, from an early Arab trader name for the island, Sri Lanka has been subject to extremist violence almost from the outset. Easter Sunday’s coordinated bomb blasts in the capital Colombo, which killed almost 300 and injured hundreds more, were just the latest event in a […]