Category: Discrimination

Discrimination in the 1960s, by an unofficial feminist

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Despite being ranked equal first for educational attainment, Australia came in at 44th overall in the Global Gender Gap Index 2020 rankings, slipping five places from the previous year. But things are better than the discrimination evident in the 1960s and 1970s*. By Laurel Wilson In 1965, Merle Thornton and her friend Rosalie Bogner walked into the Regatta Hotel in Brisbane and chained themselves to the Public Bar as a protest about the discrimination which…

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What the left hand doesn’t know

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Last week, Friday the 13th, I intended to write about International Left Handers’ Day. Apparently it’s been a thing since 1976 – a clever way of making  people aware of this difference, at least once a year. Clearly the organisers of International Left Handers’ Day do not suffer from  Triskaidekaphobia, a fear of Friday the 13th. Phobias are an irrational fear of one or more of hundreds of strange things that induce panic attacks in…

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Older Australians an economic burden

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Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s much-reported speech, where he referred to my cohort (the over-65s) as ‘an economic time bomb’, should not be seen as random. The speech to the conservative think tank, the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), was deeply calculated. Frydenberg’s thesis is that older Australians should work longer and take up re-training to help facilitate a return to the work force, thus easing the country’s social security burden. Frydenberg was immediately…

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Get the kids off Nauru, maybe

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We’ve been learning a protest song for our choir’s Christmas concert. Actually it is a plea for peace, the musical equivalent of a street march – “What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now.” John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Happy Xmas/War is Over starts by asking the universal question so many of us end up asking ourselves: “And so it is Christmas, and what have we done? Another year over, a new…

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