Opinion – Page 59

Overcrowding in Western Australia’s Prisons

This article is part of our February theme, which focuses on one of the great silences in the human rights conversation in Australia: Prisoners’ Rights. Read our Editorial for more on this theme. In March 2012 it will be twenty-one years since the release of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. The report found […]

Prison Realities and the Need for Change

This article is part of our February theme, which focuses on one of the great silences in the human rights conversation in Australia: Prisoners’ Rights. Read our Editorial for more on this theme. After several years’ involvement with the juvenile justice system in Victoria, my first contact with the adult prison system was in 1976 as […]

Having a Say: Prisoners and Voting Rights

This article is part of our February theme, which focuses on one of the great silences in the human rights conversation in Australia: Prisoners’ Rights. Read our Editorial for more on this theme. This weekend we took our children to the Boggo Road markets in inner-south Brisbane. Most of those looking for vegies and curios seemed […]

Black and white photo of Goulbourn Jail

Editorial: Prisoners’ Rights

In February we’ve been focusing on one of the great silences in the human rights conversation in Australia: Prisoners’ Rights. In his fantastic article, former ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope wonders why “prisoners are perhaps the last discrete group of human beings who are, in a general way, publically vilified, dehumanised and demonised within Australia […]

Photo of barbed wire with stormy clouds in the background

The Other Side of the Fence

This article is part of our February theme, which focuses on one of the great silences in the human rights conversation in Australia: Prisoners’ Rights. Read our Editorial for more on this theme. Our first piece for our February theme, Prisoners’ Rights, is a moving audio work which reminds us of the humanity of those we […]

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Book – Homelessness and the Law

This article is part of our December theme, which focuses on one of the least appreciated but most fundamental aspects of well-being: housing. Read our Editorial for more on this theme. Relative to international standards, Australia’s economic and political freedoms rank highly. Our standard of living is generally satisfactory. A nation of just 22 million […]

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The Home in Human Rights

This article is part of our December theme, which focuses on one of the least appreciated but most fundamental aspects of well-being: housing. Read our Editorial for more on this theme. The idea of “home” hosts many metaphors. Home is our “haven”, “sanctuary”, “nest”, “refuge” and “escape”. Home is our “domain”, “habitat”, “kingdom” and “abode”. […]

Birds on collage backgraound

Matching Children with Compassion

This article is part of our December theme, which focuses on one of the least appreciated but most fundamental aspects of well-being: housing. Read our Editorial for more on this theme. It was terribly cold and nearly dark on the last evening of the old year, and the snow was falling fast. In the cold […]

Editorial: Housing

Our December 2011 content focuses one of the least appreciated but most fundamental aspects of well-being: housing. Henrietta Zeffert sets the scene by illuminating the meaning of a right to housing in the legal sense and the integral place of the home in lived experience, in The Home in Human Rights. Ellena Savage continues the […]

Rock the boat – Become a pen-pal with an asylum seeker

[Editor’s note: For those interested in writing letters to asylum seekers in offshore processing, Julian Burnside has set up a new campaign. For instructions on how to take part, follow this link:http://www.julianburnside.com.au/letters2.htm] It was not so long ago that it was common to have a pen-pal. Remember receiving an envelope via snail mail stamped from a […]