Stephanie G. Mathis During the recent revitalization of the inner city, there was inadequate planning for future requirements. Families with more than one child occupy a large number of two-bed units. It works for younger children but not for teenagers. The properties were originally built to house singles, but the market has forced them to become affordable for young families. In the past, housing density was deemed inappropriate.
What is the plan to provide long-term care for doctors, STI clinics and funeral homes, churches, and mosques? Are we to be forced to move these to the edge of town and into strip malls and hypermarkets?
Where is the plan for housing the rental market and older, poorer people along with the growing middle class? It’s not just me who wonders why the Netherlands, for example, can demand that developers include affordable housing alongside mansions and without discriminatory rights to shared amenities like pools and gardens.
Instead, we get a retreat from housing for the public, health care, public planning, and long-term hand-wringing over social dislocations and their consequences.
To our own detriment, we’ve taken part in the privatization process of planning.
White student unions are based on a misunderstanding that anti-racism means anti-white
Lorraine Muller discusses racism in the context of class:
Racism can be compared to the class system. When talking about racism in Australia, class strata can be used to show that racism isn’t black or white. Indigenous Australians are at the bottom of Australia’s’ class system’.
New settlers are expected to conform to the ‘white culture’ of Australia, regardless of their class or occupation. Non-white and non-Indigenous Australians are not unusual to adopt the racism/classism that is prevalent in mainstream society. This can lead some people to be overtly racist toward Indigenous Australians.
The class system/racial stratification in Australian society is often seen as normal by new settlers from organizations based on class, like the former British colonies.
Australia’s defense: can we learn from New Zealand?
Mike Swinbourne aimed at the Australian defense debate and our different allegiances.
It is vital to discuss our defense strategy, but the debates are usually held within the US alliance’s sacred cow. This is not a good thing. We came to the US-UK alliance only during WWII, when it became clear that our existing strategic relationship with the UK wasn’t serving us well. We hope that it won’t take another similar event for us to consider whether the US alliance is also beneficial.
It’s not really helpful to us at all. The usual platitudes are made about intelligence, logistical support, and our inability to deal with a high-end threat on our own (which were also used to support the UK alliance). Our partnership with the US is no different. Just like our UK alliance, it comes at a cost in terms of lives and equipment, as well as the fact that we are not involved in any strategic decisions.
There are many ways to approach our Defence posture. High-end equipment, such as fighters or capable warships, is only useful in a defensive posture against a high-end threat. These high-end weapons are not useful for low-end conflicts in which we are likely to be involved. The cost of maintaining and acquiring them limits our ability to improve our forces in areas that are more useful for low-end conflicts, such as a mobile and larger army capable of multiple deployments.
The next Defence White Paper is due out in the near future (??? But I will not be holding my breath for any serious discussion of these issues. It’s a shame, as it means that our Defence Force will be ill-equipped to handle the threats we may face.
A necessary harvest: it’s time to
First, since 1999, I haven’t eaten any flesh from a mammal. This is contrary to every Australian Environment Minister of the time. As a way to learn and practice ethics, I raised all my meat myself for three years, from the egg to the plate. I’d be happy to see meat costing many times as much as it does now, and factory farming – a greater source of animal cruelty than whale hunting – completely banned. It is a very different thing to suggest that the Australian government should present this position in an international legal forum.
I agree with the comments made here about the extreme cruelty Australian governments and citizens allow to be used when producing the meat that we consume. It is hypocritical to accuse the Japanese of cruelty in this situation.
Animal cruelty judgments are subjective. I do agree that killing a whale was cruel.
I do not accept or understand that cruelty and suffering only occur at the time of death. Whale meat is relatively cruelty-free when viewed as a whole, and this includes the animal’s life span but also per kilogram.
Imagine yourself as one of 600,000,000 chickens that Australians eat each year, who will die quickly and without pain after a short imprisonment, with no contact with the earth, sunlight, or even the sun. If you think that avians are not worthy of the same respect as mammals, then consider the 4,8 million factory-farmed pigs who live on concrete in cages too small to move around.
All meat production has a cruelty factor. Australia can criticize the Japanese for their cruelty to whales, but we’ve already stopped some of our own much worse cruelty. It is hypocritical to do it before that, and often a result of racism and ignorance.
