Australia currently has one of the highest COVID case rates and death rates in the world. You wouldn’t know this from any mainstream news source.
This article is part of a series on social classes in Australia, which also includes pieces on the working class and the ruling class.
With so little difference between what’s on offer from Liberal and Labor, it’s not surprising that independents can seem like a progressive alternative. This is reinforced by the common-sense illusion that voting is the only way to change things. But there is nothing progressive about the independents.
On 11 March, after a five-week trial, police constable Zachary Rolfe was found not guilty of all charges relating to the 2019 shooting death of 19-year-old Aboriginal man Kumanjayi Walker in the Northern Territory town of Yuendemu. Not guilty of murder, not guilty of manslaughter, not guilty of engaging in a violent act causing death. Not guilty of anything.
If more evidence was needed of the continued pervasiveness of sexism in Australian society, the response to Brittany Higgins’ allegation that she had been raped in Parliament House by a fellow Liberal Party staffer in 2021, and the outcry about Grace Tame’s refusal to smile at Prime Minister Scott Morrison at an Australian of the Year get-together earlier this year, provide it.
After eight years the Australian government’s “offshore processing” deal with Papua New Guinea ended yesterday. Thousands of refugees and asylum seekers were sent by Australia to a prison centre on Manus Island over the course of the policy. It was glorified human trafficking.