A mural by Amanda Newman in Northcote, Melbourne, depicts Ai Fen, a Wuhan Central Hospital doctor who was reprimanded for raising the alarm about COVID-19 in December 2019.
Photo: Carl Grodach
The inner suburbs are home to large numbers of workers in jobs vulnerable to the pandemic. If they're forced to seek cheaper housing in outer suburbs, the urban divide will widen.
Centrelink queues shocked Australians but long before COVID-19 Western Sydney had job-poor neighbourhoods with very high unemployment rates.
Loren Elliott/AAP
Western Sydney's growth-driven boom had ended before COVID-19 hit. Some neighbourhood unemployment rates were 2-3 times the metropolitan average, with female workforce participation as low as 43%.
Children in suburbs with low levels of education and employment and high rates of poverty and crime are also missing out on the experiences that help make upwards social mobility possible.
Tracey Nearmy/AAP
Children growing up in the most disadvantaged suburbs also lack the social opportunities to develop skills and aspirations that would improve their prospects in life.
If education really is for all, more must be done to help people of all ages to access it.
School children read books at Palipis beach in Mandar, West Sulawesi.
The books were brought by library boat.
Pattingalloang, which was part of a network of moving libraries called Pustaka Bergerak.
Urwa/Pustaka Bergerak
Lukman Solihin, Research and Development Agency of Indonesian Education and Culture Ministry
Indonesian politicians and public figures say Indonesians have a low interest in reading. But people in disadvantaged areas defy this perception; they always welcome new books with joy.