Rubrica

  My friend Bill is standing for election in this year’s NSW local government elections. Bill is a teacher, musician and wildlife hero who runs, alongside his long-suffering wife Lesley, a wombat refuge. Bill is on call 24/7 for injured wildlife. He and Les typically care for dozens of wombats on their refuge, ranging from tiny pinkies rescued from the pouches of road-killed mothers, through to adults being treated and rehabilitated prior to release back to the bush. We’re talking a lot of wombats here. Bill also has a weekly radio program on the local FM station where he interviews a local person on various topical issues. Apparently all these commitments aren’t enough because now Bill wants to be a councillor. Is Bill bonkers? Probably, but that’s not the point. The point is climate change. Does local government have a role in taking climate action and how can one elected council representative make a difference? Let’s go back a few decades …  From ...

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. Aristotle             Gina, by Namatjira Gina Rinehart’s intemperate response to her portrait by Vincent Namatjira on display in the National Gallery has resulted in considerable mockery and hilarity across the full spectrum of social media platforms. Mrs Rinehart is not a self-made woman or a battler who’s made good. She inherited her wealth from her father, Lang Hancock, a man who treated Australia as his own personal quarry, and she has built on his legacy by buying off successive governments in order to extend her claims on vast swathes of the country for her personal gain. In the process, as well as becoming one of Australia's most reviled characters, she has managed to alienate at least two of her children whom she now only sees in court. According to a 2021 Guardian Australia report, Rinehart owns and controls 9.2 million hectares of Australia – a...

  Domestic: it’s a nice word. It evokes images of hearth and home, family, children and pets. It infers the privacy of the home, a cozy entity behind whose closed doors the organisation of family and domestic life can be carried on away from the public gaze. We have domestic animals, domestic plants, domestic work, domestic affairs. When ‘domestic’ is coupled with the word ‘violence’, however, we have a cognitive dissonance. This invariably means we also have a legislative dissonance. With a few notable exceptions, governments are largely reluctant to impose on the privacy of domestic arrangements. Labelling something ‘domestic’ at once removes it from the public, and therefore visible and governable, domain. The late philosopher, Val Plumwood posited a theory of ‘dualisms’, whereby contrasting concepts could be ranged in pairs, with one of each pair having automatic societal precedence. For example, in dualisms such as man/nature; object/subject; masculin...