joe.toscano's blog

Irrespective of whether we as a nation accept or don’t accept the science behind climate change, Australians are being forced to deal with an increasing number of disasters. Despite the herculean efforts of so many Australians, many volunteers, others salaried staff from multiple agencies and institutions, the current spate of bushfires around the nation highlights we, as a people, are not adequately prepared for what is ahead of us.

Since 2002 the Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion Celebrations Committee have organised these celebrations on Eureka Day - 3rd December, in Ballarat.

Since 2005 the Committee has awarded six Eureka Australia Medals at Bakery Hill, Ballarat (the site where the Eureka Oath was taken in 1854) at 10:00am on Eureka Day, 3rd December.

The EAM is awarded to people whose political or community activities reflect the principles embodied in the Eureka Oath which was sworn by miners and their supporters at Bakery Hill, Ballarat on the 29th November 1854 –

The Victorian Legislative seat of Northcote is located approximately five kilometres north east of Melbourne. It includes the suburbs of Alphington, Fairfield, Northcote, Thornbury and parts of Preston. The electorate is bounded by Darebin Creek in the east, Merri Creek in the west, the Yarra River in the south and Bell St in the north. It is approximately 25 square kilometres in area and approximately 55,000 people reside in the electorate. It is rapidly becoming gentrified. Significant pockets still have people on old age, disability and single parent benefits living in the electorate.

It’s easy to dismiss professional sport as the opium of the masses. The mass hysteria that accompanied Richmond’s inexorable march to Grand Final victory can be dismissed as a juvenile response to a sporting event. We can lament all we want that the passion, tears and jubilation that accompanied Richmond’s Grand Final victory after 37 years in the wilderness was wasted on a football match.

The term “it’s a gas” is derived from the use of helium gas as a public entertainment medium in the early 20th century. It became synonymous with a good laugh when it was used as a dental general anaesthetic in the mid 20th century. “It’s a gas”, a good belly laugh could be used to describe the current energy crisis if it wasn’t so serious.

The once powerful New South Wales Commission into Corruption has been sidelined by a host of parliamentary changes that have ripped out its legislative incisors. Nothing highlighted this more than the findings it recently delivered on a number of very shady deals that had been hatched by three former New South Wales Labor Cabinet Ministers while in power to enrich themselves and their families.

If I hear Melbourne’s Archbishop Hart again, I'm going to scream. Considering the Catholic Church’s abysmal record on childhood sexual abuse, within the Catholic Church, you’d think they'd show a little bit of contrition. No, not Archbishop Hart. First we had to put up with the Catholic Church’s position on the mildly reformist voluntary euthanasia bill before the Victorian parliament. Now we have to put up with Archbishop Hart’s comments on marriage equality and the Catholic education system.

I'm irritated about the marriage equality survey, not just because it is going to cost the community 120 million dollars, because the Liberal/National Party couldn’t make up its mind about marriage equality but for much more important reasons. One of the most powerful sentences uttered in human history is the Eureka Oath. The oath was taken by Ballarat miners on the 29th November 1854; “We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties”.

Indigenous peoples across the planet have carried, and continue to carry, the burden of colonisation. The single most important lesson learnt by indigenous peoples from the colonisers is how to die. First nations people around the world suffer from the same side effects of colonisation. Poor health, high infant mortality rates, alcoholism and drug abuse, poor educational and employment outcomes. Whether you look at the lives of the Inuit people of Greenland or Australian Aborigines in central Australia, colonisation’s legacy is largely negative.

Public housing is not just the business of the 63,000 tenants who currently utilise public housing in Victoria. It is not just the business of the 43,000 Victorians on the public housing waiting list who will never access public housing. Public housing isn’t just the business of the homeless. It is everyone’s business.