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Peter Mares
Peter Mares is lead moderator with the Cranlana Centre for Ethical Leadership and a contributor to Inside Story magazine. He is the author of No Place Like Home: Repairing Australia’s Housing Crisis (Text Publishing, 2018), Not Quite Australian: How temporary migration is changing the nation (Text Publishing, 2016), and Borderline (UNSW Press 2001), an analysis of Australia’s refugee policies. Peter previously worked for twenty-five years as a broadcaster with the ABC, mostly with Radio National.
Foreign travellers in India face four inevitable questions. ‘What is your good name?’ is usually followed in rapid succession by ‘Where are you coming from?’(meaning from which country), ‘Are you married?’ and, finally, ‘What is your religion?’. Backpacking through India twenty years ago, the first three questions presented few problems. My name was easy, Australia was recognised a ... (read more)
Sometimes books date quickly. This is the fate of To Firmer Ground, which was published in October 2007, one month before the change of government in Canberra. Had it appeared one year earlier, or had Kevin Rudd not triumphed at the ballot box, then this book might have provided a timely critique of the policy failings of the Howard government. Six months later, with Kyoto ratified and the new par ... (read more)
I witnessed Australia’s inglorious exit from the World Cup in a packed Balmain Rugby Leagues club. Many in the crowd were sporting green and gold, and when it came time for the pre-match national anthem, the crowd rose almost as one to join in a well-oiled and full-throated rendition of Advance Australia Fair. I was glad that my reluctance to take part was masked by the fact that I was already s ... (read more)
I witnessed Australia’s inglorious exit from the World Cup in a packed Balmain Rugby Leagues club. Many in the crowd were sporting green and gold, and when it came time for the pre-match national anthem, the crowd rose almost as one to join in a well-oiled and full-throated rendition of Advance Australia Fair. I was glad that my reluctance to take part was masked by the fact that I was already s ... (read more)
Could it be that there is less to Julia Gillard than meets the eye? She is a woman of fierce intelligence, Australia’s best parliamentary performer, and one of the sharpest wits in Canberra. I met Gillard a couple of times early in her political career, when she was shadow minister for immigration, and engaged her in a lengthy discussion about refugee policy. This was not long after the Tampa af ... (read more)
Singapore and Malaysia have a lot in common beyond a shared border and a shared colonial heritage. Both countries have been dominated for decades by one strong leader – Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, Dr Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia. Both have a weak Opposition and a muzzled media. Both have an internal security act inherited from the British, and which is used to detain people without trial. In both ... (read more)
In September 2009, Treasurer Wayne Swan revealed that Australia’s population of twenty-two million was growing much faster than anticipated. Just three years ago, the Intergenerational Report 2007 projected a population of twenty-eight and a half million in 2047. Treasury now expects the population to exceed thirty-five million people by 2049, an increase of almost sixty per cent. This forecast ... (read more)
I am embarrassed by my deck. It is well designed, sturdily built and a congenial place on a balmy evening. The problem is that the deck is made with tropical hardwood, logged from a rainforest in South-East Asia. Not only have I added to Australia’s yawning trade deficit, I have also contributed to the decline of the globe’s equatorial lungs.
... (read more)
Disaster movies tend to follow a similar arc. Our band of heroes not only has to survive flames engulfing the skyscraper or sea water flooding the cruise liner, but must also triumph over the calculated selfishness of others who are also scrambling for salvation. The implication is that, with few exceptions, Thomas Hobbes was right. Amid the upheaval of the English Civil War, Hobbes declared that ... (read more)