Not Neglecting, Strangling: A Short History of a Most Inefficient Policy

Not Neglecting, Strangling: A Short History of a Most Inefficient Policy

By     Joshua Black   Executive Summary The efficiency dividend has been applied to Australia’s public sector agencies for thirty-five years, and in the case of the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries Archives and Museums) sector, with particularly devastating effects The efficiency dividend has helped to destroy the formerly first-class service provision of Australia’s national cultural institutions […]
What Can Asbestos’ Past Tell Us about Silica’s Future in Australia?

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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 day […]
Leadership now: what can history tell us?

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 […]