Book Review | A Century of Compulsory Voting in Australia: Genesis, Impact and Future

As Australians have watched the crisis of democracy in the United States, we have begun to appreciate more fully our system of compulsory voting. Following Judith Brett’s excellent study From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage (see our interview with the author here), Matteo Bonotti and Paul Strangio have produced a new collection of essays about […]

Book Review: The Forgotten Menzies

Stephen A. Chavura and Greg Melleuish, The Forgotten Menzies: The World Picture of Australia’s Longest-serving Prime Minister (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2021). There is a world of difference between “amnesia” and “forgetting”. The former is an involuntary experience, the reality of physical processes undermining one’s memory. Often, the latter is a more deliberate phenomenon, a […]

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 […]

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 […]

Book Review | Australian Women Pilots: Amazing True Stories of Women in the Air

Prudence Black has reviewed Australian Women Pilots: Amazing True Stories of Women in the Air, a new book by Kathy Mexted. The aviation industry has one of the world’s poorest workplace gender balances; it also tends to be very traditional and risk adverse. Up until COVID 19 air traffic across the world was growing at […]

Book Review – Distant sisters: Australasian women and the international struggle for the vote, 1880–1914

Deborah Lee-Talbot reviews James Keating’s recent book, Distant sisters: Australasian women and the international struggle for the vote, 1880–1914. In an article about New Zealand/Aotearoa’s new parliament on Monday 19 October 2020, the Guardian offered the provocative subheading that ‘Many older, white, male members have been swept from power’. The new parliament included ‘several people of colour, […]

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

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’.

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

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 […]

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