Articles

Leadership now: what can history tell us?

Leadership now: what can history tell us?

James Walter   Australians are ‘good at elections’ as Judith Brett has persuasively argued. Our practices of mandatory and preferential voting have saved us from the institutional entrenchment of extremes of opinion that have surfaced in the public domain, and that have pushed parties and politics in, say, the United States, to brinkmanship over positions […]

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Review of the The Indigenous Voice Co-design Process: Final Report to the  Australian Government

Review of the The Indigenous Voice Co-design Process: Final Report to the  Australian Government

Emeritus Professor Tim Rowse reviews  The Indigenous Voice Co-design Process: Final Report to the  Australian Government (Canberra: National Indigenous Australians Agency) July 2021   Conservatives who are unsure what position to take on Indigenous constitutional recognition seem to be the intended audience of the Final Report of the Indigenous Voice Co-design Process, released in December […]
International Symposium on Public Health Systems: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

International Symposium on Public Health Systems: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

Contemporary Histories Research Group, Deakin University and Australian Policy and History   International Symposium on Public Health Systems: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives A virtual conference Tuesday 9 November 2021, Australian Eastern Daylight Time (UTC + 11) Register here (free) About this event Australian Policy and History and the Contemporary Histories Research Group at Deakin University […]
Q&A with Carolyn Collins, author of Save Our Sons: Women, Dissent and Conscription during the Vietnam War

Q&A with Carolyn Collins, author of Save Our Sons: Women, Dissent and Conscription during the Vietnam War

Jacqui Baker interviews Carolyn Collins about her new book Save Our Sons: Women, Dissent and Conscription during the Vietnam War.   Congratulations on the publication of your fascinating book, Carolyn! You wrote that you came across Save Our Sons while researching a different topic and time period. What were you researching at the time and how […]
Aide memoire: Swine flu in Australia, 2009-2010

Aide memoire: Swine flu in Australia, 2009-2010

Remember the swine flu? It’s the pandemic that Australia forgot, arguably to our detriment when it came to wrangling COVID-19. In this article, Dr Richard Trembath looks back on the H1N1 swine flu outbreak, and the impact on Australia, and his own family. During these times, there was a pestilence[i] Procopius On 8 May 2009 […]
Review – The Carbon Club

Review – The Carbon Club

Jeff Hole reviews Marian Wilkinson’s recent book The Carbon Club: How a network of influential climate sceptics, politicians and business leaders fought to control Australia’s climate policy, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2020  Anyone interested in the question of whether business interests wield too much influence over politicians and policy in Australia should read The Carbon […]
Review: Biting the Clouds

Review: Biting the Clouds

Jacqueline D’Arcy reviews Biting the Clouds, a recent publication by Fiona Foley. Biting the Clouds: a Badtjala perspective on the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, 1897, by Fiona Foley, UQP When one thinks of Fraser Island (K’gari), images of white sands, dingoes, and, more recently, bush fires, come to mind. […]
Q&A with Jenny Hocking, author of The Palace Letters

Q&A with Jenny Hocking, author of The Palace Letters

In our latest author Q&A, Jacquelyn Baker interviews Emeritus Professor Jenny Hocking about The Palace Letters, which describes her long and extraordinary campaign to gain access to the correspondence between the Australian Governor General Sir John Kerr and Queen Elizabeth II in the prelude to the dismissal of the Whitlam government on 11 November 1975. […]
Celebrating the knowledge production of Aboriginal women: Jacquelyn Baker reviews the 20th anniversary edition of Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s ‘Talkin’ up to the white woman’.

Celebrating the knowledge production of Aboriginal women: Jacquelyn Baker reviews the 20th anniversary edition of Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s ‘Talkin’ up to the white woman’.

In our latest book review,    Jacquelyn Baker reviews the 20th anniversary edition of Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s Talkin’ up to the white woman: Indigenous women and feminism (University of Queensland Press).   By Jacquelyn Baker 2020 has already been dubbed a historic year. As the new year ticked over, record-breaking bushfires continued to burn throughout New […]
Angie Sassano reviews ‘Indigenous Self-Determination in Australia’, edited by Laura Rademaker and Tim Rowse

Angie Sassano reviews ‘Indigenous Self-Determination in Australia’, edited by Laura Rademaker and Tim Rowse

In our latest article, Deakin University PhD Candidate Angie Sassano reviews a new collection about the history of Indigenous self-determination edited by Laura Rademaker and Tim Rowse.   By Angie Sassano Despite the shift to self-determination in Indigenous policy making in 1973, Australia has faltered, with critics such as Megan Davis (2016) claiming self-determination has […]
Gwyn McClelland reviews Lesley Blume’s ‘Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World’

Gwyn McClelland reviews Lesley Blume’s ‘Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World’

Dr Gwyn McClelland’s review of Lesley Blume’s   Fallout describes how the US government sought to cover up the horrific effects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  Blume tells us the story of  journalist  John Hersey’s scoop in the New Yorker in August 1946, which signalled the beginning of a propaganda contest about the […]
The media and Indigenous political aspirations: Michael Dillon reviews Amy Thomas, Andrew Jakubowicz & Heidi Norman’s ‘Does the media fail Aboriginal political aspirations?’

The media and Indigenous political aspirations: Michael Dillon reviews Amy Thomas, Andrew Jakubowicz & Heidi Norman’s ‘Does the media fail Aboriginal political aspirations?’

What role does the media play in perpetuating social and economic disadvantage among Indigenous peoples in Australia? Michael Dillon reviews   Amy Thomas, Andrew Jakubowicz & Heidi Norman’s survey of media reporting of key political moments, Does the media fail Aboriginal political aspirations? While Dillon agrees with the authors’ conclusions about the inadequacy of media coverage, […]
In Godwin We Trust: Debunk[er]ing the Hitler/Trump Analogy

In Godwin We Trust: Debunk[er]ing the Hitler/Trump Analogy

Academics have been busy in the last few   years   calling out ham-fisted analogies between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler, and the contemporary United States and 1930s Germany. It’s easy to laugh at clumsy historical references, but harder to make informed   judgements about the   validity or otherwise of these references. In our latest article, Dr Mathew […]
After COVID-19: Reviews of ‘Upturn’ and ‘What Happens Next?’

After COVID-19: Reviews of ‘Upturn’ and ‘What Happens Next?’

The Austrian economic historian’s Walter Scheidel’s 2017 book, The Great Leveler, argues that gross inequality is the natural state of human affairs. This structure is only interrupted by events such as mass war, revolution, state failure and pandemic disease. Does COVID-19 present an opportunity to halt growing inequality and reset our economic and social order? These […]
Australian Soldier Atrocities in Afghanistan: Why We Should Not Be Surprised

Australian Soldier Atrocities in Afghanistan: Why We Should Not Be Surprised

By Dale Blair The allegations of atrocities committed by Australian special forces in Afghanistan may be shocking, but they suggest continuity rather than rupture with our military past. In this article, Dr Dale Blair outlines Australia’s past involvement in war crimes, and the exalted status of Australia’s soldiers and official patronage that have obscured the […]
Managing the Federation During a Pandemic: Spanish Influenza and COVID-19

Managing the Federation During a Pandemic: Spanish Influenza and COVID-19

Global health pandemics, it would seem, make us reach for local remedies and cling to local identities. As state borders have closed and parochialism has increased, COVID-19 has made Australians more aware of their federal system of government than they have been for a long time.  In this piece about the 1919 Spanish influenza outbreak, […]
Ever-present possibilities and the status quo.

Ever-present possibilities and the status quo.

This piece is part of the Urgent Histories forum which has been organised by the Australian Historical Association. Klaus Neumann has written an engaging response to the articles in this forum, which can be found in History Australia. Humankind needs to tackle climate change. Urgently. Historians may want to reconsider their professional practices in light of this […]
Book Review – The Australians at Geneva: Internationalist Diplomacy in the Interwar Years

Book Review – The Australians at Geneva: Internationalist Diplomacy in the Interwar Years

Joan Beaumont reviews James Cotton’s The Australians at Geneva: Internationalist Diplomacy in the Interwar Years, (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2022). ISBN 9780522878998 (paperback) 9780522879001 (e-book).   The League of Nations has been something of a poor relation in the historiography of Australian foreign policy. Traditionally, it has been tarred with its utter failure to check […]
What Can Asbestos’ Past Tell Us about Silica’s Future in Australia?

What Can Asbestos’ Past Tell Us about Silica’s Future in Australia?

James Watson   On 28 February 2023, the Federal Workplace Relations Minister, Tony Burke, met with his state and territory counterparts to take the first steps to ban the manufacture of silica-containing products in Australia. Silica is a naturally occurring mineral found in quartz and is used in the manufacture of kitchen benchtops. Inhalation of […]
A Broken Model? Medicare in the summer of 2023

A Broken Model? Medicare in the summer of 2023

Richard Trembath   When I suggested this article to the editors of Australian Policy and History  (which is now some time ago) there was considerable discussion in the media about the strain on Australia’s health services, partly as the result of the pandemic, and partly as the result of long-term structural issues.  For example, Chip […]
Book Review – Elizabeth and John: The Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm

Book Review – Elizabeth and John: The Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm

Matthew Allen reviews Alan Atkinson’s Elizabeth and John: The Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm (Kensington, NSW: NewSouth, 2022).   Alan Atkinson has been writing about the Macarthurs, on and off, throughout his academic life. His MA thesis focussed on John and the family’s role in the early colony, his PhD on James’ political career, while Camden […]
How the push to end tobacco advertising in the 1970s could be used to curb gambling ads  today

How the push to end tobacco advertising in the 1970s could be used to curb gambling ads  today

Julian Smith/AAP Carolyn Holbrook, Deakin University and Thomas Kehoe If you think you are seeing a lot more gambling ads on television and online platforms, you are not imagining it. They are so common that high-profile AFL players have refused to participate in sponsored gambling. Online gambling companies are ploughing huge amounts of money into […]
From Militant to Middle-of-the-Road – Why Do So Few Remember International Women’s Day’s Radical Past?

From Militant to Middle-of-the-Road – Why Do So Few Remember International Women’s Day’s Radical Past?

James Keating & Michelle Staff   This year’s International Women’s Day (IWD) has two themes. The first—‘Cracking the code: Innovation for a gender equal future’—was devised by the United Nations (UN), which officially recognised 8 March as IWD in 1977. The second—#EmbraceEquity—is promulgated by the British consultancy Aurora Ventures, whose pithier mottoes are increasingly popular […]
Book Review – The Australian History Industry

Book Review – The Australian History Industry

Deborah Lee-Talbot reviews Paul Ashton and Paula Hamilton, The Australian History Industry, (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2022).   The Australian History Industry is an ambitious book that covers the intersecting and often competing sectors that produce the various elements of this nation’s history. This book builds on earlier volumes that touch on this topic, […]
Q&A with Marion Stell, author of The Bodyline Fix

Q&A with Marion Stell, author of The Bodyline Fix

Jacquelyn Baker interviews Marion Stell about her recent book, The Bodyline Fix: How Women Saved Cricket (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2022). The book details the first international women’s Test cricket series between Australia and England in 1934-35, which followed the controversial Bodyline men’s series in 1932-33.   Congratulations on the publication of this […]
Policy Brief – Artificial Intelligence and Education

Policy Brief – Artificial Intelligence and Education

Lyndon Megarrity gives himself the task of recommending to the federal Labor government a national response to the potential use and/or misuse of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the state and territory education systems and within the higher education sector.   ATTENTION: Minister for Education, Hon Jason Clare MP The Prime Minister, the Hon Anthony Albanese […]