Our Animal Shelter Laws Need to Change

by cjharris | Apr 11, 2020 | activism, current affairs, justice

Late last year, my partner and I fostered a beautiful greyhound who had been surrendered to the care of a large animal shelter in Melbourne. Dash had suffered trauma as a result of five years of exploitation by the greyhound racing industry. He came to us with anxiety...

Will a Pandemic Make Us Realise How Privileged We Are?

by cjharris | Mar 28, 2020 | current affairs, equality, life

I think we can all agree that it has been an exhausting week. And month. And year. Australia was only just beginning to recover slowly from the horror show of the worst bushfire season in history, when we — as everywhere else — were struck with a global pandemic. It...

Why Do I Care So Much About the Death of One Animal?

by cjharris | Mar 1, 2020 | activism, current affairs, environment, justice, women

It’s been an emotionally fraught fortnight, for women in particular — torn between the conviction of Harvey Weinstein (and the potential precedent this sets for other powerful sexual predators), the sentencing of the killer of Grace Millane, a young British backpacker...

I Don’t Want to Have Kids Because of Climate Change – Stop Telling Me This Is Stupid

by cjharris | Jan 19, 2020 | current affairs, environment, equality, feminism, women

– These days, every time I open the news, there is reporting of yet another way in which the world is headed towards catastrophe. In the last week alone, we’ve seen bushfires in Australia, floods in Indonesia, record-breaking high temperatures, and accelerated...

In Australia, It’s Impossible to Think About Anything Except the Bushfires

by cjharris | Jan 6, 2020 | current affairs, environment, life, politics

I woke up in Melbourne this morning, not just to the smell of smoke — I’m used to that — but the unmistakable odour of burning. It was so strong that I actually checked my partner hadn’t left the stove on, before I realised that it was coming through our closed doors...

Australia Is On Fire — Where Is Any Sign of Leadership?

by cjharris | Dec 19, 2019 | activism, current affairs, politics

A couple of days ago, my sister sent a message to the family Facebook chat — their area in the Blue Mountains was declared “too late to leave” as the roads out were closed off. She had already evacuated her two kids to my Mum’s house in Sydney and driven back to...