APH Essays | Page 2 | Australian Policy and History Network

Friday essay: if growing US-China rivalry leads to ‘the worst war ever’, what should Australia do?

Hugh White, Australian National University Should Australia join the United States in a war against China to prevent China taking the US’s place as the dominant power in East Asia? Until a few years ago the question would have seemed merely hypothetical, but not anymore. Senior figures in the Morrison government quite explicitly acknowledged that […]

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 […]

Can ‘wicked’ policy problems be successfully tackled over time?

By Brian Head There has been a growing literature on ‘wicked problems’, which are generally seen as complex, controversial, intractable and evolving. Both the nature of the ‘problems’ and the best ‘solutions’ are strongly contested by political parties and various stakeholders. The problems are ‘wicked’ in the sense that they are not easily tamed […]

Why did women’s liberationists in Melbourne protest Anzac Day?

Jacquelyn Baker explains why women’s liberationists in Melbourne demonstrated against Anzac Day in the 1980s and considers how their concerns are still relevant today. On 26 April 1983, the Canberra Times reported that 168 women in Sydney and seven women in Melbourne had been arrested on Anzac Day.[1] The women in Sydney had allegedly […]

Stricken Deer: Psychology and Counselling in Contemporary Australia

Richard Trembath examines the increasing demand for mental health services in Australia. I was a stricken deer that left the herd Long since; with many an arrow deep infixed My panting side was charged, when I withdrew To seek a tranquil death in distant shades . . . I see that all are wanderers, […]

How Might Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Affect Relations between Turkey and Russia?

By Jennifer Chantrell The recent Russian military incursion into Ukraine has shocked the world; even until just a few weeks ago the Ukrainian people were relatively complacent that Russia would not invade Ukraine. The Russian –Ukrainian conflict, however, has been ongoing since 2014 when pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Ukraine region known as the […]

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 […]

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 […]