27 January 2023 Article by Francis Sullivan, as published in Pearls and Irritations In 1996 Paul Keating said, “when you change the Government, you change the country”. Nothing could be truer as the Albanese Government goes about implementing a far reaching, some might say radical agenda, particularly as it relates to many of Australia’s most marginal and disadvantaged. Since the...
16 December 2022 Article by Francis Sullivan, as published in Pearls and Irritations On the 30th anniversary of former Prime Minister Paul Keating's historic Redfern Speech, First Nations Australians are still waiting for its articulated vision to be realised. Keating's speech was a watershed moment in the sorry history of Indigenous reconciliation. Never before, and only once or twice since,...
13 December 2022 Article by Francis Sullivan, as published in The Daily Telegraph As the Reserve Bank lifts interest rates to their highest levels in a decade, the big losers aren't just homeowners but also the hundreds of thousands of low-income renters who are paying more than half of their earnings just trying to keep a roof over...
20 June 2022 Article by Francis Sullivan, as published in Eureka Street Despite last week’s decision by the Fair Work Commission to push up the national minimum wage by 5.2 per cent, millions of Australians, in all parts of the country, will continue to live in poverty and on survival wages. The facts are that the Commission’s...
5 April 2022 Article by Francis Sullivan, as published in the Daily Telegraph Last week’s budget speaks loud and clear to where the Coalition government sees itself and who it needs to talk to in the lead-up to the May general election.It is a budget that puts politics before fairness and the “comfortable middle” before the disadvantaged.It...
28 March 2022 Article by Francis Sullivan, as published in Pearls and Irritations In a civilized country, where we pride ourselves on a fair go for all, a very significant part of our community is missing out. As Josh Frydenberg puts the final touches on next week’s Budget it is fair to say that the millions of Australians...
16 March 2022 Article by Marilyn Rodrigues, as published in The Catholic Weekly A number of Catholic charities are bracing for the impact of a barrage of petrol and other price hikes on essentials on their services. Financial experts expect inflation to rise dramatically due to soaring energy prices and the ongoing supply chain woes caused by the...
1 April 2021 Article by Ursula Stephens, as published in Eureka Street At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the government reassured Australia ‘We’re all in this together’ but the truth is that the end of JobKeeper and the Coronavirus supplement payments will leave more than 2.6 million people in poverty. The end of the $90 billion JobKeeper...
25 February 2021 Article by Ursula Stephens, as published in Eureka Street 'It's the value of the work, not the worker.' So said a government backbencher to me last week while I was speaking to him about the omnibus industrial relations (IR) Bill that has just passed the House of Representatives. He went on to argue that his friend...
25 September 2020 Article by Joe Zabar, as published in Eureka Street The latest National Accounts figures show that Australia is officially in recession, with a massive 7 per cent decline in GDP for the June quarter. While not exactly surprising, it has the Morrison Government rightly concerned. The havoc COVID-19 has wreaked on our economy has been...
