Scott Ludlam | scott ludlam

Untangling the laws of terror

It’s rare to hear the phrase “war on terror” these days — it has been seemingly purged from the official lexicon as the superficial certainty of the Bush/Howard years gives way to darker and more ambiguous terrain. Australia is still a nation at war: one and a half thousand troops on the ground in Afghanistan, backing NATO’s installation of a brittle democracy in a violent failed state where the distinctions between friend and terrorist change by the day. But something is going on at home as well: a determined, coordinated expansion of the internal security estate that is permanently

19 August 2009

Zero Nuclear Weapons

August 6th is the 63rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city of Hiroshima. I’ve just spent four days in a city where the memories are not only fresh, but engraved in stone, protected in world heritage-listed monuments, and taught urgently to young and old, local and foreign alike. The Japanese have a word for the survivors of the twin atomic attacks on August 6 and 9, 1945. They call them Hibakusha, those for whom nuclear weapons signify something other than peace marches.

6 August 2009

city of exiles

On a dusty street in Lhasa, Tibet, a demonstration has gone bad. Tensions have been escalating for days; murmured opposition and spontaneous flashes of dissent spreading and finally igniting mass demonstrations from the Capital to every regional centre in Tibet. The security forces have been observing, documenting, falling back as numbers have grown.

6 July 2009

Despair and Defiance

spend a couple of hours with the people responsible for the health and integrity of country threatened by a radioactive waste dump and the issue takes on a crystal clarity. this written in a rage on the way back to canberra from darwin…

12 June 2009

Building the resilient city

“The future is here. It’s just not widely distributed yet” William Gibson. Take a drive an hour south through the rapidly expanding growth corridor fusing Perth to Mandurah, and you’ll fly past a road sign at once hopeful and heartbreaking.

13 March 2009

“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste”

These are turbulent times. The catastrophic bushfires may have wiped it off the front page, but last week saw the passage through federal parliament of the Government’s $42 billion ‘economic stimulus package’.

15 February 2009

Orizuru: Peace Ambassadors and Spinifex Hills

The sky is white today. The sea has turned slate grey, and the deep swells rocking the Mona Lisa slowly from side to side are ripped with white foam. We have been out of sight of land for only two days since leaving behind the lonely outflung arms of Aotearoa, and our world has contracted to the swaying confines of this long white liner. Some time around sunrise tomorrow the coastline of New South Wales will come into view and my brief sojourn with the Peace Boat will be over.

10 February 2009

…so that was estimates

One of the few advantages of being new to this job is appreciating it’s strangeness with fresh eyes. Three times a year, while the Senate is in recess, an intriguing and largely overlooked ritual takes place in the airy committee rooms of Parliament House in Canberra. Senior public servants, heads of departments and a highly qualified army of advisers and minders converge for five days of cross-examination in front of the Senate’s eight standing committees.

27 October 2008

Housing crisis beyond meaning

It’s been a long time since there has been much of a focus on affordable housing by the Federal Government. For many years, Government policy has been skewed toward housing as just another investment instrument, with tax concessions encouraging a speculative bubble which was great for many of those who got into the market and a disaster for those left behind. At the same time, State Governments have cut budgets and run down public housing stock, creating the situation today of interminable waiting lists and the spectre of homelessness alongside some of the wealthiest communities on the planet.

10 October 2008