Current affairs

Chances are you might be a little like me these days, vicariously living out a dream of la dolce vita through social media.

Italian breast cancer patients will no longer require permanent tattoo markers during radiation therapy.

Zana Bytheway realised in early March that the COVID-19 pandemic would cause dramatic changes to Australian workplaces. (Article published on Victoria Legal Aid the 18 June 2020))

We had to stop. We had to put a stop to the hyperactivity into which our lives had plummeted. It was imperative that we slow down, that we stopped in disbelief and a little uneasy in front of our windows.

The COVID19 emergency has turned lives upside down all around the world. We’ve seen a sharp rise in unemployment with entire industries shut down as the world discovers the social and economic implications of self-isolation.

‍Italians are aware of the uncertainty of their present and future. In fact, 69% of Italian citizens feel insecure thinking about the future, 17.2% feel pessimistic, and only 13.8% see their future as a harbinger of expectations. (Photo Pixabay)

Italy has stopped. It's on lockdown. Everybody is home. Everything is frozen, stuck in a suspended limbo. Life comes out of the daily dimension to enter a new one, timeless and space-less. The empty streets and piazze are the oneiric dream of 60 million Italians. Every aspect of modern life has been affected in the effort to stem the Coronavirus pandemic.

Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia (PCFA) and the WA Italian Club have joined together to make a difference by hosting the very first Biggest Ever Blokes’ Lunch (BEBL) in Perth on Friday 3rd April 2020 to support Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia (PCFA).

Sardinian Cultural Association (SCA) made a contribution of $6,000 per annum to Marcellin College to enable a 16 year old Convitto Nazionale Student studying English and travel to Melbourne for a period of 6 weeks. During his stay the student will be studying at Marcellin College and be hosted by the family of the student who has been selected to travel to Cagliari.

A stones throw from the centre of Melbourne lies a suburb called Carlton. It is home to the Museo Italiano, CO.AS.IT, the Dante Alighieri Society and the Italian Historical Society. The bars and cafes on popular Lygon Street are diverse, some are historical establishments, with touters thrusting menus into the hands of passers by, the love projects of post-war migrants. (Above: John Hajek - Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Melbourne - Photo: David Hannah)

It seems the wave of Italian migration to Australia, particularly Melbourne, just keeps getting bigger. Postwar migration saw Australia’s first Italians forming small communities around the city of Melbourne, creating “Little Italy” on Lygon street, Carlton. So, it makes sense that Carlton is the location to hold the annual Italian Festa, which unfortunately, draws fewer crowds every year. (Photo- Source freemelbourne.com.au)

Committed as we are to fueling the controversy over the Italian ‘decline’ (as defined by the Italian economic newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore), we often forget about the reputation that the Italian system has earned and maintained in various sectors for several decades.

The female who’s who of the Italian business community gathered Wednesday evening 23 October for the launch of the Italian Business Women’s Network, hosted at Ferrari Brisbane.

Wandering through the streets of an Italian city, a contemporary visitor may occasionally come upon small golden tiles, set into the pavement and each inscribed with a name and several dates and details (‘arrested on’ and ‘deported from’) explaining the fate of someone who once lived in the given location. (Often the following words include ‘assassinated’ or ‘killed in Auschwitz’). (Photo: Stumbling stones in Turin) - Source: guidatorino.com

People of Italian descent all over the world are becoming aware that their heritage may be more than an emotional connection to Italy. In recent years, Italian citizenship has become a hot topic across the age spectrum for various reasons.

David Attenborough, Pope Frances, and Al Gore. These household names might not have much in common, but they are all speaking the views of a growing proportion of ordinary people, who are becoming ever more concerned about the state of our planet. (Photo - Extinction Rebellion movement in Italy. A group of activists in Bologna)

Italy has again become a country of emigrants. Today, a large number are highly educated people who take their talent abroad in search of better career opportunities and professional benefits. Thirty thousand Italian researchers leave each year, while only three thousand qualified scientists migrate to Italy. In recent years, the media, policymakers and scholars have used the term ‘brain drain’ to describe this phenomenon.

This year it took seven months for humankind to exhaust the natural resources that planet Earth provides in one calendar year. 29th July symbolically marked the date when humanity begins to use the resources of the future and to live on credit.

Surveys, as we know, are usually a waste of time. But the results of the YouGov demographic research, supported by English newspaper the Guardian as well as the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, are quite astonishing. (Photo Pexels)

According to the website emigrati.it, for every one hundred Italians living in Italy, there are another seven living abroad. This same source also tells us that of the four million Italian citizens spread out across the globe, most are those that have left Italy in the last twenty years. Currently, around 45,000 Italians emigrate per year. (Photo Courtesy of Fabrizio Venturini)

Located 140 km from Perth, Western Australia; Harvey is a small agricultural town renowned for its fresh produce and for being the home of beloved Australian children’s author May Gibbs. Nestled amongst an abundance of orange trees and flora and fauna, this quaint country town appears to be a world away from the chaos and turmoil of international conflict.

CO.AS.IT. Melbourne the main Italian welfare and cultural organisation of Australia has turned fifty. The anniversary was celebrated last September with a number of events and a social gathering at The Docklands.

When I ask my students at Monash why they are studying Italian, many of them reply ‘because of my Nonni’. Many of them have in fact learnt to speak (or at least understand) some Italian, while talking to their grandparents, who usually migrated to Australia in the 1950s and 1960s.

Currently, in Australia, online gambling is limited to a handful of registered sports betting sites, and residents don’t have access to online casinos or poker sites. This is down to the strict tightening of the Interactive Gambling Act in 2017.

Nowadays, online slot games are a million miles away from the original clunky machines that they evolved from. Instead of featuring the classic fruit symbols of old, they are now usually based on hit things in popular culture.

I recently found myself at a checkout with my crying 10-week-old son. I spoke to the cashier in English then tended to my son in Italian, soothing him and using diminutive Italian forms of his name.

Politicians, entrepreneurs and notable members of the Italian community in Western Australia attended the 72nd Italian National Day celebrations last week at the Perth Town Hall.

Homemade lunch at Nonna’s, Italian school on Saturdays, traditions of sauce making season, salami and olive. These are a few of the precious memories each founder and member of VITA share and hold dearly. Although each born in Australia, VITA representatives have Italian background.

Angelo Paratico, running for the Senate in the centre-right coalition formed by the parties known as Forza Italia, Lega and Fratelli d’Italia

In his 1964 masterpiece The Italians, Luigi Barzini, in his infinite wisdom and acute social awareness, states: “In the heart of every man, wherever he is born, whatever his education and tastes, there is one small corner that is Italian”. What else could explain your need to pick up this edition of Segmento? Everyone can connect with, even in the smallest way, the Italian way of life, culture and language.

The Sardinian Cultural Association (SCA) of Melbourne has just turned 30 years old and is set to achieve further goals in fostering the cultural well-being of the Sardinian immigrants−including their children and grandchildren−and their ties with their original homeland.

Since becoming a republic in 1946, Italy has had 28 Prime Ministers which is by far the largest number recorded by any Western democracy in the same period.It is politics Italian-style, which means never letting anyone become established at the helm of government.

As the heads of government of the world’s seven most industrialized democracies walked down the streets of Taormina towards the San Domenico Palace Hotel where their meetings were to take place, an old Sicilian man observing the scene was heard saying: “Questo G7 sarà oscurato dalla bellezza di Taormina” (This G7 will be overshadowed by the beauty of Taormina).

On a recent trip to the US I was humbled to explore Ellis Island’s National Museum of Immigration. The harsh conditions of the New York winter melted away as I stepped inside the warm and welcoming lobby. After catching my breath, I stopped to admire the world I had stepped into. Millions of hopeful immigrants had to withstand gruelling transit conditions with no guarantee of security in the US.

With a few exceptions, men continue to monopolize all positions of power. Not just in politics but in all major industries and institutions, including those preserving, managing and displaying art collections. It is a fact that most of the world’s great museums and galleries remain firmly under male control.

West Australians were the first in the country to get an exclusive look at the Italian naval ship FREMM (European Multi-Mission Frigate) ITS Carabiniere. The state of the art vessel, which boasts the turbine power of 60 Formula One cars and has the capacity to generate enough electricity to a city of 12,000 inhabitants; arrived in the Port City of Fremantle on January 25, as the first stop in the navy’s one-month visit to Australia.

ALTO is the name of a business and social network created by a group of second-generation Italian-Australians who take pride in their Italian identity and bring it into play in their business dealings and social relations. They are the torchbearers of a transformed Italian culture in Australia that has come a long way from the experience of their parents.

On May 11th 2016, the Italian Parliament approved a law giving the green light to civil unions in Italy. On that fragrant spring evening, to celebrate this historic accomplishment, people gathered in front of the Trevi Fountain in Rome.

For decades Northbridge, an inner city suburb of Perth, was affectionately known as “Little Italy”. The streets were filled with the aromas of roasted coffee, the scent of baked Italian goods and the sound of Italians chatting away as they went on their daily passeggiatas.

The appreciation of female beauty has been at the heart of Italian art and culture for centuries, and continues to be relevant in contemporary Italy. The feminist idea that glamour works against women, famously argued by the American author Naomi Wolf in her book “The Beauty Myth”, has never taken root in Italy.

Being an Italian ambassador is not an easy job even in a highly civilized and friendly country like Australia. It requires a great deal of competence in economics, trade, communication and, last but not least, a high degree of fluency in the English language.

It is December but the sun is pounding over Rome and transforms a winter’s day into the subtle suggestion of an early Spring. Everything is ready. In Vatican City, thousands of pilgrims are crowding into the Colonnato del Bernini in a kind of Christian apotheosis, full of emotion.

Carlo Guaia, a third year Bachelor of Arts student at the University of Western Australia, is a staunch believer in the “fair go” spirit of Australia. For a growing number of people such spirit is long dead and gone but not for him who has put it into practice through a community organization he founded late last year, with the aim of bringing Italian and Australian scholars, professionals and students together.

Before his election just over a year ago, the new president of the Republic of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, was mostly known by ordinary Italians for an oddity associated to his surname. A quiet, reserved man, he had been a member of Parliament for 25 years (1983-2008), had served three times as a government minister and once as vice-premier before becoming a judge of the Constitutional Court, the highest Italian judiciary institution.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE ABRUZZO CLUB? “The club is not just a committee, the various subcommittees, the volunteers and staff; the Club is all of us! It is for you, for your family, for your children and friends.”

It is eleven o’clock and I am smoking a cigar on the busy waterfront of my hometown. On the seashore a father and son are sharing the son’s exciting experience of fishing.

At a recent funeral for a respected elderly family member I got to thinking that as more and more of that wave of Italian post-war migrants die off, our current lifestyle threatens the traditional view of what it means to be the sons and daughters of Italian immigrants to Australia.

Sophia Loren’s visit to Melbourne as a special guest of “La Dolce Italia” Gala Charity Dinner to raise funds for the Alannah & Madeline Foundation, was but a flickering moment in the long and impressive career of the most famous actress Italian cinema has ever produced.

He is the youngest ever-Italian prime minister and has been set out to transform his outdated and ailing country into a leading European nation. His name, of course, is Matteo Renzi and his sheer optimism and confidence are reminiscent of the early days of Silvio Berlusconi’s rise to power.