This week saw the O'Farrell government throw its full support behind the powerful pubs and clubs lobby in its campaign to stop the federal government from introducing reforms to help problem gamblers. Clubs Australia and the Australian Hotels Association have launched a $20 million advertising campaign opposing a mandatory pre-commitment scheme for poker machine betting, …
Faith and the National Curriculum
In early 2008 the Rudd government set up a National Curriculum Board to develop a national school curriculum for Australia. Documents for key subject areas have now been released, and have attracted strong criticism from educators and churches. Dr Kevin Donnelly, director of the Melbourne-based Education Standards Institute, writing in Quadrant magazine, said the new …
Burning holy books is wrong
To the dismay and horror of most Christians, the pastor of a tiny fringe church in Florida supervised the deliberate burning of a copy of the Muslim holy book, the Qur'an, on March 20, an act that has unleashed a wave of retaliatory protests, burnings and even killings in Muslim-dominated countries. The NSW Council of …
Selling sex in Sweden
In 1999, Sweden became the first country in the world to criminalise the purchase of sexual services - in other words, it became illegal in Sweden to buy sex. The main reason for this is the direct link between prostitution and human trafficking. If you intervene to reduce demand, so the logic goes, then supply …
Doctors should not kill their patients
For those of us seeking to expose the fallacy of so-called "mercy killing," the state of play just got trickier. With several recent failures to pass euthanasia bills in state parliaments, euthanasia advocates in South Australia have tried a new tack. They have proposed a law which would protect doctors against a charge of killing …
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