Writings

A collection of 345 posts

Writings

Line between censors and sensibility a clear one

You cannot learn from books you’ll never read or be inspired by ads you’ll never see. The insidiousness of censorship is its invisibility. Banned books don’t leave outlines where they should be on library shelves. Banned political ads don’t announce their presence on TV or radio

Writings

The Tweeting Truth (according to Leslie) in the ASA Mag

Forget the cliches. Twitter is an essential tool for Writers because it is the easiest way to raise one’s profile and engage with readers. Read the piece here:

Writings

Why Women Have "Late-Term" Abortions

A women was taken to Box Hill Hospital last week after complications while having an abortion at a clinic in Croydon. She suffered organ failure. Whatever the connection between the abortion procedure and the woman’s current condition – and there is no evidence that there is one – any incident at

Writings

Don't Let Disability Scheme Be Yesterday's News

Just more than two weeks ago, the Australian government announced its commitment to introducing a National Disability Insurance Scheme. The announcement was accompanied by the first tranche of money – $10 million – required to scope the project. It followed years of lobbying by people with disabilities, their families and carers for

Writings

According to some, the problem with the media is YOU

Last weekend I chaired a session at the Byron Bay Writers' Festival in which ABC Radio presenter and newspaper columnist Phillip Adams, Network Ten’s Charlie Pickering and Fairfax columnist and ABC presenter Richard Glover gave an overflowing audience their views on the future of an ethical media. I

Writings

Harry Potter and the Courage it takes to be that First Follower

As anyone who has followed my writings over the years knows, I cry easily. Which is why to those folks it will come as no surprise that the latest and final instalment of the Harry Potter film epic – Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 – made me cry. Not

Writings

Would we judge Top Cop Nixon any differently if she were a man?

I admired Christine Nixon throughout her nine-year tenure as Victoria’s chief commissioner of police and then head of Victoria’s Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority. Recently, we were on the same flight to Queensland. While disembarking, I tapped her on the shoulder, introduced myself, and told her so. Now,

Writings

Time for a Reality Check - It's not all about you

WE WANT it all ways and we’re terribly entitled. Yet many of us want to be inspired, and led, to something better. How else to explain that we, or political pundits on our behalf, cry out for political leadership yet – in the same breath – wax indignant that politicians aren’

Writings

News without Ethics: Media the Murdoch Way

Fish rot from the head down. So do unethical businesses and corrupt societies. This is as true when the fish is an unethical business as one of the arm of liberal democratic government – executive, judicial or legislative. It is also true of the fourth estate or free press, the often

Writings

The Myth of the Lying Victim - The case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn

By anyone’s estimates, the rate of sexual assault in Australia is high. In 2010, the Australia Bureau of Statistics (ABS) recorded 80 victims per 100,000. This is significantly higher than the next two most common violent crimes – kidnapping/abduction and murder – that impact 3 and 1 Australians per

Writings

Leslie Wins EVA award for Column on Sexual Assault

The EVAs’s reward reporters who report responsibly on violence against women. In 2011, Leslie won the EVA for Best Opinion for her piece “There are many reasons women don’t report rape” on the media coverage of sexual violence by elite athletes in the AFL and her own experience

Writings

The ugly face of child beauty pageants

Do an internet search on “child beauty pageant” but be prepared. Not just to be depressed by images of overblown, cap-toothed, heavily made-up under-fives but the obvious yet rarely commented upon fact that all these kids are girls. This issue is red hot in Australia right now, as the June

Writings

It's Time to Deny ACCESS to our Children

Last week, Victorians were rocked by explosive revelations that ACCESS Ministries – the group that provides around 97 per cent of school chaplains and scripture volunteers in Victorian schools – has been using its privileged position in governments schools to “make disciples” of children as young as five. ACCESS Ministries is an

Writings

Fighting for the Right to be Equally Mediocre

A feminist is a person who believes the world should be gender-blind. Feminists believe that women – 51 per cent of the population – should be distributed throughout all levels of society in proportion to their numbers. In short, feminists fight for a world in which women, to quote Eddie Murphy, get

Writings

Values of Easter and Passover Go Beyond Faith

Passover and Easter are upon us. While the precise timing of each festival is dictated by different calendars (Passover the lunar one and Easter by the Gregorian one [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar]) both commemorate emerging values in an ancient world. Values like liberty and equality that are

Writings

Are Christians Really the Source of Oz Values?

It has become commonplace for the Australian Christian Lobby and some right-wing churches to claim Christianity is the source of Australian values. Tolerance, equality of opportunity and between genders, the fair go – yep, when it comes to these and other values Christians claim to have got there first. As one

Writings

Mia Freedman & the Debate about Fat Acceptance

NOT long ago Mia Freedman tweeted, ‘'If you have to ask, your bum does look big in that. #rulesforlife’‘. She immediately drew fire about the sentiment and about it being made by someone who claims to be a body image activist (Freedman chaired the National Body Image Advisory Group)

Writings

Medical Refusal Rights Must be Regulated Before More Women Die

In 2008, Victoria repealed all abortion related sections from the Crimes Act. Among the provisions of the Abortion Law Reform Act that attracted opprobrium from the approximately 4% of Australians who oppose abortion in all circumstances was section 8, the conscience clause. Often misrepresented in public debates by opponents of

Writings

An interminable debate

Giving Sorrow Words, By Melinda Tankard-Reist, Duffy & Snellgrove, $17.95 Are women who have abortions free moral agents or coerced victims? THE bulk of Giving Sorrow Words consists of 19 edited stories of women’s grief after abortion. The stories, and the introduction and afterword that sandwich them, emphasise

Writings

A Welcome Shift to the Political Middle Ground

Something is happening to conservative political parties in Australia and overseas. Left-of-centre parties have gained power in the UK, US and Australia by advocating agendas far more centre than they are left. This has left the conservative side of politics floundering, unsure if they should stay the course or contest

Writings

Let’s Keep the Counsellors Honest and True

Pregnancy counsellors must declare their stance on abortion. Australian women have just inched one step closer to gaining access to RU486. Last week, Cairns-based obstetrician Dr Caroline De Costa received word that her application to become an authorised prescriber of the medication had been approved by the national drug regulator,

Writings

Senator’s choices could mean none for women

There’s only one thing I have to say about Queensland National’s Senator Barnaby Joyce. I hope he’s telling the truth. “About Tesltra?” you might ask. Or Voluntary Student Unionism, where Joyce has sworn to vote against any Coalition bills that will reduce student services. Or perhaps you

Writings

Abbott playing fast and loose with the truth

Since becoming Federal Health Minister, Tony Abbott has demonstrated a casual, at times even antagonistic, relationship with facts that don’t support his moral views. This week’s performance on Insiders continued this lamentable tradition. The Minister claimed that non-Government politicians supported “human cloning”, that the Government’s own expert

Writings

Abbott v Gillard: Believing in What’s Awful, or Nothing at All

Here’s a question exercising some voters: What is worse? Casting one’s vote for a man who strongly believes in what’s awful, or for a woman who believes in nothing except getting herself elected? The conundrum exposes the two central items on our wishlist for political leaders: that

Writings

Why Australians Need a Right to Die

Senator Bob Brown has been trying for some time to repeal the Euthanasia Laws Act, a federal law that denies the Northern Territory and the ACT the right to legislate for assisted suicide. But the new-found power of the Greens and federal parliamentary arrangements arising from the hung parliament will