On the afternoon of Saturday 21 April, as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, emerging and established comedic talent came together at the Melbourne Town Hall in Deadly Funny, Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander comedy showcase. For just under two hours the audience was entertained by Cy Fahey, Jay Wymarra, Eshua Bolton, Tristan […]
Could you live on $2 a day? Given a single morning coffee costs around twice that much, it is almost unimaginable for most of us. Yet 1.3 billion people – that’s almost 60 times the population of Australia – currently live in extreme poverty, on less than AUD$2 a day. … as people rise above the […]
In her opening remarks, Dr Caroline Norma explained with fervour that the framing of human trafficking in Australian discussion is all wrong. I was convinced – having come into the Young UN Women’s “Human Trafficking in Melbourne: Prevention, Protection and Prosecution” event held earlier in the year on 22 March – that human trafficking was […]
Arts Centre Melbourne presented Singing Stories in association with Multiculturalism Australia at the Famous Spiegeltent earlier this month on Saturday 12 April. Featured artists included SistaNative, a Tongan heritage orator and singer; Paulo and Gill, an East Timorese duo taking a fresh look at traditional folk music; Saritah, a South Korean born singer who has […]
Dr Stephen Zunes critically examined the wave of resistance to autocratic regimes that has engulfed the Middle East since late 2010 during a lecture presented by the Castan Centre for Human Rights on 19 March 2012. The lecture was held at the Monash Conference Centre. Dr Zunes, Professor of Politics and International Studies at the […]
On the 17th of April, Read & Rights will meet at LOOP to discuss the human rights issues in Chloe Hooper’s The Tall Man. Here’s our review. Please send yours to jess@rightnow.org.au. For more info about the event, please click here. Hurley had battle in his name, Cameron had doom in his. The bitter joke […]
This article is part of our March theme, which focuses on an ongoing challenge to Australian society: Race & Discrimination. Read our Editorial for more on this theme. On 27 February 2012, in a virtually empty House of Representatives, the Government’s Stronger Futures legislation was passed with little debate and no formal division. It is […]
He is a creature known to the Aboriginal people in Southeast Australia. Though shy by nature, at night he would snatch children that stray from their camp. Thus he is in some ways their protector; with his fiery red eyes scaring them out of midnight wanders. He was bought to Melbourne by artist Steaphan Paton […]
On 17 February 2012, Mrs Fatou Bensouda, Deputy Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) delivered the 2012 Peter Brett Memorial Lecture at Melbourne Law School. The talk focused on two upcoming milestones. Mrs Bensouda will assume the role of Chief Prosecutor from the middle of the year, having been deputy prosecutor since 2004. She […]
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. Flat Out is a Victorian state wide support and advocacy service founded in 1988 for women who have had contact with the criminal […]
In a time of rapid change, human rights continue to be a central concern in Asia. … the governments of Australia, America and Europe have lost “their moral authority on key issues like torture, unlawful imprisonment and the torment of refugees” … On 7 December, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division, Elaine Pearson, […]
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 […]