The focus of this month’s issue of New Internationalist is fracking. As NI Co-operative member Dinyar Godrej writes in his web-only extra: ‘The even greater madness is to put the urgency of doing something about climate change on the back burner (in a manner of speaking) just because fracking may offer a few more years’ worth of fossil fuel’.
There is plenty more in the magazine – and on the website, covering a wide range of issues. Here is my Scratchy Lines cartoon from page 8:
The Continence Gang – published in 2001 – was a comic book written by Esther Quintal for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Esther wrote that ‘Continence is something my people do not understand … It is clear that incontinence is a problem and causes shame for many’. It was a challenge getting the ideas and messages into pictures, but a lot of fun as Esther encouraged me not to hold back.
Last week Marjory Kobold, one of the coordinators of the project phoned to say that Esther had died.
Esther’s book was one of the most popularly requested Government publications. Here is the cover and opening story:
The mainstream media – generally – having glimpsed, will move on.
Here is this week’s Pro Bono news website cartoon:
There are many young people with disabilities living in nursing homes. The new National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) promises a great step forward for supporting people with disabilities getting on with their lives. However, as this Pro Bono News post explains, it will not help those young people in aged care nursing homes as there is already a lack of suitable and affordable housing for all young people with disabilities. Research has found that ’53 per cent of young people in residential aged care received a visit from a friend less than once a year’.
Here is my cartoon for the Pro Bono website:
Here is today’s Pro Bono News cartoon.
The not-for-profit sector is set to do it tough under our new conservative government. The government has said it will abolish the charities regulator (ACNC), and the minister in charge of the new Disability Care (NDIS) is not in the cabinet. Read more here.
On the bright side, the UN World Happiness Report has ranked Australia in 10th place. Read the Pro Bono article here.
The new Australian government will be writing all it’s own punchlines…
Support alternative media – become a member of Australian Options – and get to download copies of the journal. The Winter issue features articles on taxation, climate change and more – including an interview with Frank Stillwell, political economist.
If you thought that Governments reducing taxes, but spending on health, education and the things governments should invest in (not to forget saving the planet), doesn’t add up … you were right.
Here are a few cartoons from the issue:
The plight of asylum seekers being trafficked in boats from coastal villages in Indonesia to Australian shores, mainly Christmas Island, is a major political issue – and certainly a major humanitarian one. How to handle it, and just how to think about it , are complex. A bottom line however, is provided in an article posted on the Pro Bono news website: Salvos Staff Condemn Nauru’s ‘Cruel & Degrading Conditions’. To quote the opening lines,
‘A Public Statement by past and present Salvation Army Staff Members about asylum seeker conditions on Nauru claims that recent rioting there is an inevitable outcome from a cruel and degrading policy.
‘The strongly worded statement comes from a collection of former and current Salvation Army staff who have spent the last ten months working with asylum seekers at the Regional Processing Centres in Nauru and Manus Island’.
Here is today’s Pro Bono News cartoon:
Simon Kneebone - cartoonist and illustrator 