Speakers, Deputies and the Clerks: the Revealing Light of Biography?

The Biographical Dictionary of the House of Representatives shines a historical light on the men and women who have served as Speaker, Deputy Speaker, or Clerk of the House since Federation. This includes providing a better idea of what sorts of individuals have typically filled these offices and how the speakership, instead of adopting Westminster […]

Is the COVID vaccine rollout the greatest public policy failure in recent Australian history?

Carolyn Holbrook, Deakin University; James Walter, Monash University, and Paul Strangio, Monash University look at the public policy problems of the COVID Vaccine rollout, in an article originally published in The Conversation. Is the Morrison government’s COVID vaccination rollout program one of Australia’s biggest ever public policy failures? As COVID-19 infection numbers in locked-down Sydney […]

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 […]

Remembering Janet Malcolm: her intellectual courage shaped journalism, biographies and Helen Garner

Prof. Matthew Ricketson, looks back on the legacy of journalist Janet Malcolm. Journalism has rarely had a fiercer critic, nor a finer practitioner than the longtime writer for The New Yorker, Janet Malcolm, who died last week aged 86. Some might quibble with the description of Malcolm as a journalist, but journalism is a far […]

Aftermath: Vietnam Veterans and their Historians

AD Hope, Inscription for a War Linger not, stranger; shed no tear; Go back to those who sent us here. We are the young they drafted out To wars their folly brought about. Go tell those old men, safe in bed, We took their orders and are dead. Peter Yule’s book, The […]

Leading America and Biden’s new/old foreign policy: The exclusive new democracy club, trade-bloc or alliance?

By Digby Wren Australia faces unprecedented regional trade and security challenges in the aftermath of the Trump presidency and a continuing pandemic calamity. The Morrison government has been in lockstep with the Trump administration’s ‘Strategic Adversary’ approach to China. How will President-elect Joe Biden’s approach differ from his predecessor’s and how can the Morrison government’s […]

The Recovery: Technology and Society

During the CV-19 pandemic, the use of Information Technology has enabled millions to work from home and gain some relief from social isolation while avoiding potential exposure to the virus. After the crisis has passed, however, Australian society will need to reflect carefully about its digital interactions and how best to balance them with wider […]

APH in NYC

Our director, Carolyn Holbrook, was invited to participate in an international panel about history and policy at the recent American Historical Association conference in New York, with Dane Kennedy from the National History Center and Charles Kraus from the Wilson Center in Washington DC and Andrew Blick from History and Policy in London. The panel […]

‘Crazy brave’: How a group of inexperienced idealists changed Victoria’s stagnant child welfare sector

By Dr Sharron Lane This article examines the work of several Superintendents who together had some success in changing Victoria’s stagnant child welfare system in the early 1960s. It features the work of Alfred Spencer Colliver and the Kildonan Children’s Home which he transformed in the space of just five years. More than just changing […]

The minimum wage a milestone in the history of human rights

by Professor Marilyn Lake Rarely does a day pass without newspaper reports of rampant economic exploitation and underpayment of workers by employers. Employment law principal at Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, Giri Sivaraman attributed the spike in wage theft to a number of factors including the decline in union power and membership, the difficulty of legal redress […]

APH Essays