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

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 […]

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?

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 […]

Australia will allow some Pacific Islanders to settle in Australia under the new Pacific Engagement Visa. Why has it taken so long?

By Keimelo Gima, SHSS, UPNG. The Australian minister for International Development and the Pacific, Pat Conroy recently announced Australia would allow some Pacific Island families and their dependents to settle permanently in Australia via the new Pacific Engagement Visa. Putting aside the benefits of the scheme to the Islanders and their countries, Conroy’s move […]

A ‘fruitful period of opposition’: Whitlam and telecommunications reform

By John Doyle Historian Frank Bongiorno recently suggested that Gough Whitlam’s achievements as opposition leader in the lead-up to Labor’s election victory in 1972 ‘should grab our attention’ because he succeeded ‘both in keeping governments accountable and in preparing for office’. The origins of his government’s positive legacy, says Bongiorno, lay in ‘a fruitful […]

Pandemics remind us that Australia is a Federation, but we are quick to forget

By Dr Carolyn Holbrook As we well remember, COVID incited a high degree of tension between the Commonwealth and the states. The former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce probably put it best when he said: For a while there we went from a federation back to little colonies again. I was waiting for Queensland […]

Knowing What to Do: Mental Health Literacy in Australia

By Richard Trembath ‘What sort of people live about here?’ ‘In that direction’, the Cat said, waving its right paw round, ‘lives a Hatter: and in that direction’, waving the other paw, ‘lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.’ ‘But I don’t want to go among mad people’, Alice remarked. ‘Oh, […]

Democracies are fragile. Australians must act urgently to safeguard ours

AAP/Lukas Coch Carolyn Holbrook, Deakin University The solicitor-general’s recent finding that former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s furtive accrual of ministerial portfolios “fundamentally undermined” the principles of responsible government has drawn attention to the precarity of democracy. In seeking to safeguard our democracy, we must consider the extent to which Australians’ long-standing apathy about our democratic […]

Speech by Emeritus Professor Graeme Davison at the Melbourne launch of The Work of History: Writing for Stuart Macintyre

Melbourne Athenaeum Library, 15 July 2022 The Work of History: Writing for Stuart Macintyre, edited by Peter Beilharz and Sian Supski,Melbourne University Press. Many words– true and heartfelt words– have already been spoken and written about Stuart and his remarkable legacy. Among them, I particularly remember those spoken by his daughter Mary on the […]

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