Showing all posts about Australia
A Voice to Parliament for Indigenous Australians
1 August 2022
The Australian government has undertaken to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in the Australian constitution. While it is unclear at this stage exactly what form a Voice to Parliament would take, the purpose is clear:
A Voice to Parliament is a body enshrined in the Constitution that would enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to provide advice to the Parliament on policies and projects that impact their lives.
A referendum, a necessary step in the process of altering the constitution, has been proposed for 2023, giving the Australian people the opportunity to have their say in the matter.
An Indigenous Voice to Parliament is seen as an important step in Australia’s ongoing reconciliation with its First Nations people.
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Australia, Indigenous culture, politics
A no hook-up city: Sydney not the place to Netflix and chill
25 July 2022
Out of fifty-three cities across the world, Sydney, Australia’s most populated city, ranks as just about the worst when it comes making friends — particularly if you were born outside of Australia — and hooking up, say the results of the Time Out 2022 Index.
When it comes to making friends, if you’re not born in Sydney, forget about befriending Sydneysiders. I’m sure that’s not the experience of every last new-comer, but somehow the finding doesn’t surprise me. Some years ago I read a guide for students coming from India — I think it was, I cannot track down the webpage right now — for degree courses in Australia. Long story short, they were told to expect the going to be tough when seeking out Australian born friends.
The guide explained Australians have “posses” of friends that seldom, it seems, mix. Old friends, school friends, uni friends, work friends, sports team friends, the list goes on. Aussies apparently go from one such group to another, but members of each group rarely meet anyone from other groups. Short wonder people from elsewhere have a hard time ingratiating themselves with the locals. If you work with an Australian, you might see them at Friday night drinks, but that’s about it.
The difficulty of befriending locally born Sydneysiders is something Kim Solomon, who moved to Sydney from South Africa in 2004, recently related to Sydney Morning Herald writer Michael Koziol:
A well-travelled 41-year-old who has also lived in London and spent time in the United States, Solomon finds Sydneysiders difficult to engage with on a personal level, whether they be strangers on the train or parents in her daughter’s school community. ‘It’s very hard to break into established groups of people who were born and raised in Sydney,” she says. “I’ve developed a good group of friends, but they’re all from South Africa and the UK.”
I don’t see too many people randomly striking up conversations on the trains in Sydney, so expecting to make friends on public transport might be hoping for a bit much. But the parents of her kids’ classmates? Sydney, what have you become?
When it comes to being more than friends though, people also felt frustrated, with seventy-one percent of Time Out 2022 Index respondents describing Sydney as a hard place to hook-up.
Sydneysiders are also starved for more intimate connections, it seems, with 71 per cent of those surveyed saying Sydney was a hard place to hook up, although Singapore, Stockholm and Porto, Portugal’s second city, all ranked lower when it came to Netflix but no chill.
Here’s a situation where place of birth doesn’t weigh so much I suspect though. If you click, you click. I get the feeling if people spent less time inside, and more time looking at what was going around them when outdoors, instead being focussed on the screen of their smartphone, they might not find hooking-up quite so difficult.
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40% of Americans believe in creationism, 40% of Australians do not
20 July 2022
Recent Gallup research reveals forty percent of Americans believe humanity and the universe were created by a divine act, in the last ten-thousand years. About a third believe we have evolved over millions of years, with divine guidance, while not quite a quarter of Americans do not think a divine being plays any part in our existence.
Forty percent of U.S. adults ascribe to a strictly creationist view of human origins, believing that God created them in their present form within roughly the past 10,000 years. However, more Americans continue to think that humans evolved over millions of years — either with God’s guidance (33%) or, increasingly, without God’s involvement at all (22%).
While these numbers are similar to polling carried out about five years ago, a gradual increase in Americans who do not believe in a god has been observed since the late 1940s. This trend mirrors data from the last Australian Census, conducted in 2021, which found about forty percent of Australians have no religious affiliation, up from thirty percent in 2016.
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America, Australia, religion, trends
Australia today, some highlights from the August 2021 Census
28 June 2022
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has begun releasing Census data which was collected in August 2021. Items catching my eye included the revelation there are now as many Millennials, people generally aged 25 to 39, as there are Baby boomers, who are aged 55-74.
There’s also been a significant increase in people stating they have no religious affiliation, with the figure up almost ten percent on the previous Census in 2016. Here’s a rundown of these, plus other, highlights:
- Sydney is Australia’s largest city by population, with 5.2 million inhabitants
- NSW is Australia’s largest state by population, with almost 8.1 million inhabitants
- Australia’s total population is 25.5 million. It has doubled since 1971, when there were 12.4 million inhabitants
- Australians have a median age of 38 years
- There are now almost as many Millennials, 5.4 million people, as there are Baby Boomers
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up 3.2% of the population
- English, Australian, Irish, Scottish, and Chinese, make up the top five ancestries of Australians today
- Mandarin, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Cantonese are the top languages spoken after English
- Almost 39% of Australians have no religious affiliation, up from 30% in 2016
- About 44% identify as Christian, down from about 52% in 2016
- Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Judaism are the top religions after Christianity
- There are over one million single parent families in Australia
- There are almost 25,000 same sex marriages
- About 31% of Australians either live in rental accommodation, or outright own their dwelling
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Photos of the construction of Sydney Opera House
27 June 2022
A collection of incredible photos of the Sydney Opera House, taken during its construction. Today the Opera House is one of the most recognisable buildings in the world, but it seems Sydneysiders were not enamoured by the iconic structure while it was being built.
Today the building is loved, yet while it was under construction attitudes were very different. The local press continually attacked its cost, its delays, and its architect; headline writers gave the now familiar white shell roof nicknames such as ‘the concrete camel’, ‘copulating terrapins’ and ‘the hunchback of Bennelong Point’.
What’s also compelling about these photos is both how much has changed, and how much has remained the same, when looking at the areas surrounding the land the Opera House stands on.
Via Things Magazine.
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Australia, history, photos, Sydney
Remaining mindful of Australian Indigenous reconciliation
7 June 2022
National Reconciliation Week, a celebration of Australian Indigenous history and culture, concluded last Friday, 3 June 2022. But there are still ways we can remain mindful of reconciliation, and the history and culture of Indigenous Australians, daily, and immersing ourselves in First Nations art, film, and literature, are some of the ways we can achieve this.
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Is an Australian republic any closer than it was 25 years ago?
4 June 2022
Australian federal MP Matt Thistlethwaite has been appointed to the role of assistant minister for the republic, in the new Labor led government, a move that will put the question of an Australian republic, and an Australian as head of state, rather than the British monarch, back on the agenda.
The push for Australia to break away from the monarchy has received its best news in 25 years after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appointed an assistant minister for the republic. Australian Republic Movement chair Peter FitzSimons says the appointment of Matt Thistlethwaite was a major show of support. It remains to be seen what progress Labor will make on the issue after it confirmed a constitutionally-enshrined First Nations Voice to Parliament was its referendum priority.
A break from the British monarchy has long been on the cards. In 1995, then Prime Minister Paul Keating declared Australia should become a republic. But the notion was was rejected by the Australian people in a 1999 referendum, with about fifty-five-percent of the population voting against the proposal. But twenty-three years on, support for a republic could hardly be called overwhelming.
Polling conducted earlier this year in the states of New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland found a little over a third of people supported an Australian republic, while a little under a third were opposed. But closer to forty-percent — a significant margin — said they were “unsure or neutral” on the matter. When posed the question: yes or no, would you support a republic, fifty-four-percent of respondents said yes. But it’s not much of a margin, and I’d contend a minimum of sixty-percent of Australians would need to be firmly in favour for the idea to carry.
But Australians appear to have other priorities, and the matter of a republic is of little interest to many, although that doesn’t mean Australia is a country filled with monarchists:
The biggest hurdle for republicans is the reality that Australia is already an independent nation, with only sentiment and inertia linking us to the British crown. Most Australians, when pressed, struggle to remember the name of the current governor-general or to explain their role.
Interestingly, this week marks the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth’s, seventieth jubilee. I only know because I try to keep up with the news. A month ago I’d have had no idea the occasion was imminent. Certainly I’m not aware of any events locally to acknowledge the milestone. I see no banners flying on the streets, nor detect any sort of buzz of interest generally. People seem to be going their day-to-day affairs as normal.
But another obstacle for those in favour of a republic is what the exact role of any head of state, presumably a president, would be. What sort of executive power would they be invested with, and how would they assume office? Should they be appointed by the Australian parliament, or elected by popular vote? There are many questions to address.
Personally I think Australia should be a republic, and a nation with a head of state chosen by the people. It may only be a symbolic gesture, but it’s an important one.
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New Australian arts minister promises more focus on sector
30 May 2022
The recent change of Federal government in Australia has raised hopes the arts sector will receive more economic support, with incoming arts and industrial relations minister Tony Burke keen to address insecure work and unreliable pay issues.
Burke has also long advocated for addressing issues of insecure work and unreliable pay, claiming Labor would launch a senate inquiry into insecure work if elected. The arts and cultural sector has the dubious title of being an industry leader in insecure work. And it is at the intersection of cultural and industrial relations policy where our new arts minister could dramatically reshape the sector.
I think Burke has a task and a half before him, but a closer focus on the arts is long overdue.
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Anna Spargo Ryan: hope and relief after the Australian election?
27 May 2022
Melbourne based Australian author, Anna Spargo-Ryan, who’s novels include The Paper House, and The Gulf, writes about the hope and relief some Australians are feeling — at least momentarily — as a result of the change of government in Australia last weekend.
For today – and maybe only for today, but we’ll see how things pan out – I feel held. Not fighting the solipsistic dread with weapons made out of my own wellbeing, but part of a community that has chosen to vote for the betterment of others. That’s new. It feels good to sit with it, to briefly imagine, in the words of famous internet depressed person Allie Brosh, that maybe everything isn’t hopeless bullshit.
The mood is a little different presently, but there often is when a new administration is elected. Whether things will be become “better” long term? That remains to be seen.
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Anna Spargo-Ryan, Australia, politics
Struggling Australians turn to crowd funding to pay the rent
20 May 2022
Melbourne based journalist Stephanie Convery, writing for The Guardian:
The unbearable costs and instability of the rental crisis are pushing more people towards crowdfunding for accommodation, with housing-related appeals on one of Australia’s biggest fundraising platforms more than quadrupling over the past year. The campaigns range from requests for assistance with rental arrears and covering the costs of temporary accommodation, to appeals for help to buy caravans or other forms of mobile accommodation in the face of homelessness.
We are frequently told Australia is a rich — or at least well off — country, making situations like these unfathomable. There may be inequality, often the result of a lack of momentum, but how something basic like reasonably priced rental housing remains a problem beggars belief. I fear whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s federal election, there will be little change to the status quo. Because, you know, this a state issue, not a federal one.
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