Call an end to HIV/AIDS weasel words: @burgewords #CreatingWaves on #AIDS2014

THE world has been watching Melbourne this week as the city hosts the 20th International AIDS Conference. Despite initial reports from the event focusing understandably on the delegates killed by the missile attack on their flight over eastern Ukraine, the conference agenda hit the airwaves visibly on this week’s episode of QandA. As a result […]

Thorpie did not have a Sweet Sixteen: @burgewords #CreatingWaves for @IanThorpe

  I WASN’T going to write about Ian Thorpe’s coming out. What more can there be to say about this moment in his life, which has huge ramifications for him but should have none for us? But then I read one article which got me angry, the kind of piece I’d hoped to avoid but which I knew […]

A Murdoch-free household is a galaxy too far: @burgewords #CreatingWaves on #NewsCorp

  NEWS sites are getting harder to access for free of late. Paywalls are up and apparently profitable for News Corp and Fairfax. Crikey had one for years and recently Wendy Harmer’s flagship site The Hoopla shut the gate on free reads with its 34 cent per day subscription. Media-hungry online consumers are faced with a choice about […]

Opera, give it to me straight: @burgewords #CreatingWaves on @Tamar_Iveri

Amid the ongoing flurry about Georgian opera singer Tamar Iveri and the comments she made in the social media about a protest march in Georgia on International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) in May, 2013, there is an assumption the soprano is just one homophobic voice in an accepting international opera industry, an aberration who must be […]

France, a country driven by différence: @burgewords #CreatingWaves

  It’s safe to assume our Treasurer Joe Hockey would not have enjoyed a trip to France with Prime Minister Tony Abbott earlier this month. There’s just too many wind turbines across the French landscape. Hockey would have been offended every few kilometres. I should know, I spent hours admiring the French commitment to clean wind-generated […]

Ballerinas and blue pole dancing: @burgewords #CreatingWaves on #Budget2014

  I have never paid much attention to the fallout of budget week, simply because the Arts are always sufficiently financially knocked-around long before the Treasurer makes our economic disenfranchisement official. If a body like The Arts Council or Screen Australia were to be closed, that would register. Hearing they’ve had cuts only blends into […]

Stand up, citizen journalists: @burgewords comments on #FairfaxStrike

  A very simple tweet went out on the same afternoon Fairfax journalists agreed to strike in protest at the company’s plan to cut 80 jobs, mainly in production (layout and sub-editing) and photography. Since the current Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) hearing will continue through the strike, a citizen journalist (‘CJ’) asked whether any […]

Try stopping the bleeding hearts: @burgewords #CreatingWaves

There’s no use beating around the bush: The Abbott Government has stopped the boats. I am arts columnist for No Fibs, and I probably should be writing about the Arts. However, like many artists in Australia at the moment, I am experiencing plenty of distractions of the political kind. I find it difficult to focus […]

Visiting concentration camps in Utopia: @burgewords interviews @GGeorgiadisRN on ‘that’ comment the DIBP didn’t like

  The Australian twittersphere freaked out when refugee advocate @VanessaPowell25 was threatened with legal action by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) earlier this month. Unless she removed a post on her Facebook, which documented one moment at a protest outside the Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney’s Western Suburbs, the DIBP would “consider […]

Creating communities with a common voice: @burgewords interviews @TheArtsParty

  Motorists, shooters and fishers have all got one, so have sex enthusiasts and christians. Why not creatives? Micro political parties have leapt into the Australian voters’ consciousness like never before, and right at the launch of this column, one of our readers tipped us off about the imminent formation of a new party named […]