Opinion Pieces

Reusing, reworking and rewearing: Fashion circularity

Reusing, reworking and rewearing: Fashion circularity

This is one of a series of articles on Circular Economy by Lorinda Cramer and Deborah Lee-Talbot, published for #WorldEnvironmentDay 2025 As community repair groups and repair cafés spring up around Australia, a grassroots movement to decelerate our throwaway culture and divert goods from landfill grows.[1] From furniture to televisions to toys, repairers give our […]

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‘Bean Thinking Green – How Australians are Slow-Sipping Their Way Into a Circular Economy’

‘Bean Thinking Green – How Australians are Slow-Sipping Their Way Into a Circular Economy’

This is one of a series of articles on Circular Economy by Lorinda Cramer and Deborah Lee-Talbot, published for #WorldEnvironmentDay 2025   Tumble out of bed and stumble to the cafe, order myself a cup of…circular economy ambition? This version of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5” may not be as toe-tappin’ as the original, yet […]
No Worries, No Waste: Australia’s contribution to the global circular economy

No Worries, No Waste: Australia’s contribution to the global circular economy

This is one of a series of articles on Circular Economy by Lorinda Cramer and Deborah Lee-Talbot, published for #WorldEnvironmentDay 2025 First used in 1953 by the American economist Howard Bowen, the term “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR) acknowledges the growing social power of organisations.[1] Typically, CSR manifests as corporations “giving back”, a process that has […]
Book review: On Xi Jinping

Book review: On Xi Jinping

Kevin Rudd, On Xi Jinping. How Xi’s Marxist Nationalism is Shaping China and the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024)   In On Xi Jinping, a work based upon his PhD research, Kevin Rudd has provided perhaps the most thorough account yet available of the rise to dominance in China of Xi Jinping’s ideological thinking. […]
On the Balance of Improbabilities: The Australian Take on the Wuhan Lab Leak Theory

On the Balance of Improbabilities: The Australian Take on the Wuhan Lab Leak Theory

Soon after a deadly plague came with dark winds out of the East.[i]   In the Saturday Paper of 23-29 November 2024 James Bradley reviewed the collection, The Best Australian Science Writing 2024.  I am not as enthusiastic as Bradley about the publication as a whole, but his comments on one article I found particularly […]
Carolyn Holbrook’s Address at the Ballarat Reform League Charter’s 170th Anniversary

Carolyn Holbrook’s Address at the Ballarat Reform League Charter’s 170th Anniversary

This is an edited version of a speech given by Associate Professor Carolyn Holbrook to the Ballarat Reform League Charter 170th Anniversary St Paul’s Church Ballarat, Monday 11 November 2024   Thank you very much for this invitation to address you on this important occasion of the 170th anniversary of the declaration of the Ballarat […]
The end of P&O cruises leaves a vacuum of soft diplomacy and cultural exchange between Australia and Papua New Guinea

The end of P&O cruises leaves a vacuum of soft diplomacy and cultural exchange between Australia and Papua New Guinea

Dr Deborah Lee-Talbot   P&O Cruises, one of Australia’s most well-known travel companies, will cease trading in March 2025. Folding into its parent company, Carnival Australia – itself a subsidiary of the American company Carnival Corporation – the end of P&O cruises leaves behind decades of soft diplomacy and cultural exchange between Australia and Papua […]
Threats and challenges to Australia’s democracy are well outlined in government report. Now for some  action

Threats and challenges to Australia’s democracy are well outlined in government report. Now for some  action

Carolyn Holbrook, Deakin University The Strengthening Australian Democracy report released by Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil this week provides a sophisticated diagnosis of the challenges facing democratic governance around the world. The report also offers a broad prescription of how Australia might meet those challenges. The Strengthening Democracy Taskforce, established by O’Neil in 2023, prepared […]
The making of the Australian Historical Studies 55:2 (2024) ‘Wan Solwara: Australia and Papua New Guinea’

The making of the Australian Historical Studies 55:2 (2024) ‘Wan Solwara: Australia and Papua New Guinea’

Helen Gardner,     Jonathan Ritchie and Brad Underhill   The most recent issue of Australian Historical Studies: Wan Solwara: Australia and Papua New Guinea, brought together scholars from PNG, Australia and the broader Pacific to reconsider the place of PNG in Australia’s national story.  Edited by Deakin University scholars: Helen Gardner, Jonathan Ritchie and Brad […]
Is Australia doing enough to respond to Papua New Guinea’s catastrophic landslide?

Is Australia doing enough to respond to Papua New Guinea’s catastrophic landslide?

Jonathan Ritchie, Deakin University and Brad Underhill, Deakin University The total number of people killed in the landslide in Papua New Guinea’s remote and mountainous Enga Province will probably never be known. Shortly after the entire hillside collapsed on Friday, it was speculated around 150 men, women and children had lost their lives. Such a […]