Over the course of my life I’ve had the thrill of seeing some of the amazing forms of life on this earth. I have dived with great white sharks off the coast of South Australia; been delighted by fairy penguins making their way en masse from the ocean to their burrows in the sands of Phillip...
Giving to charities. The five questions you should ask, and administration costs is not one of them.
In the decade or more I’ve been working in the charitable sector, the one question that seems to pop up frequently is “but how much of the money actually gets to the people?” People, quite reasonably, want to be assured that the money they are giving is achieving good outcomes for...
Finally Some Good News on Refugees
The Federal Government today announced it had reached an agreement with the United States to resettle refugees on Manus Island and Nauru in the US. This is incredibly welcome news. The indefinite detention of refugees drove them to despair and hopelessness. Now they have the prospect of starting...
America, what have you done?
From all the reports I’ve read Donald Trump won the Presidency because people wanted a change from the insider politics of Washington. The more offensive he was, the more bigoted and misogynist his public statements, the more he turned his back on mainstream policies. the more he reinforced...
I still miss her like crazy
Two years ago I wrote a blog piece “She’s moving out today” in which I described my thoughts, feelings and hopes as my daughter Jessica left home to undertake an acting diploma in Sydney. Two nights ago she graduated. How those two years have flown! In what seems a very short space of time I’ve had...
The abusers within our churches
In the last year or two domestic violence has loomed large in public discussion. No-one seems to know quite how prevalent it is, but we know that 2 women die each week at the hands of their partner and that surveys consistently show up to 1 in 4 women over the age of 15 have experienced at least...
The real reason we want to ban Muslim migration
Last week a lot of us were talking about the Essential poll which showed that 49% of Australians wanted a ban on Muslim immigration1http://www.essentialvision.com.au. Like many, I assumed that the reason was the association of Islam with terrorism in popular thinking, but a closer look at the...
Three questions for the Prime Minister
Dear Prime Minister, I followed with some interest the speeches on Australia’s approach to the refugee crisis that you gave this week in New York. Given you have commended Australia’s approach to the rest of the world, I have a few questions I would like to ask. 1. If every country...
On renovating my kitchen & upgrading my boat. What the producers of reality TV know that we don’t
Sandy and I have watched the last few seasons of House Rules, a TV reality show in which couples renovate each other’s homes. What strikes me is that the attraction of the TV show is not the quality of the renovations produced – if it was we would not be watching amateurs do their thing...
Some Reflections on Transgender and Intersex
In the past few years I have done a lot of reflecting around issues of sexuality. One area with which I have only begun to engage is intersex, which I take to refer to people whose biological sex doesn’t conform to either male or female, and transgender, which I take to refer to people whose sexual...