Opinion – Page 62

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The burqa or the ban: which is worse?

For a garment designed to conceal, the burqa has managed to attract more than its fair share of attention. In France, where the burqa is worn by roughly 1900 women, or 0.3 per cent of the population, it was nevertheless deemed worthy of a blanket ban in all public spaces. Here in Australia, calls for […]

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Investigating Police Violence

On the evening of 11 December 2008, fifteen year-old Tyler Cassidy was shot and killed by police during a confrontation at a skate park in the Melbourne suburb of Northcote. A coronial inquest into the incident is currently in progress. This follows an internal investigation by Victoria Police in which Assistant-Commissioner Stephen Fontana found the […]

From right: Gideon, Robert and Michael Cordover, taken a few weeks before Robert's passing.

Dying with dignity

I come from a very noisy family. My dad spoke six languages and told jokes in all of them; he was the family storyteller. My mum grew up in London traffic and I am the youngest of five outspoken children. When I was eighteen years old, the stories stopped. The valve between my dad’s oesophagus […]