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Book Review – Histories of Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Australia

Book Review – Histories of Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Australia

Richard Trembath reviews Evan Smith, Jayne Persian and Vashti Jane Fox (eds), Histories of Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Australia* (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2023), 266 pages including footnotes, introduction and index.   Australian writer Dennis Glover states in the Guardian (25 August 2024) that ‘we are entering a new age of savagery and organised […]

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Book Review – Liberalism as a way of life

Book Review – Liberalism as a way of life

Georgina Downer reviews Alexander Lefebvre’s Liberalism as a way of life, (NewSouth, 2024)   The term ‘liberal’ is likely to inspire admiration or loathing depending on the company you keep. It’s also likely to be understood differently by everyone you ask. The definition eludes us; there are national distinctions such as the differences between North […]
Book Review: The Australian Embassy in Tokyo and Australia–Japan Relations

Book Review: The Australian Embassy in Tokyo and Australia–Japan Relations

Hirokazu Matsui reviews Kate Darian-Smith and David Lowe’s (eds.), The Australian Embassy in Tokyo and Australia–Japan Relations (ANU Press, 2023)   In 2017, as a postgraduate student in Japan, I took a course run by David Carter, who then held the visiting professorship at the Center for Pacific and American Studies (CPAS) at the University […]
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 […]
Book Review – Mandates and Missteps: Australian Government Scholarships to the Pacific − 1948 to 2018

Book Review – Mandates and Missteps: Australian Government Scholarships to the Pacific − 1948 to 2018

Nicholas Hoare reviews Anna Kent’s Mandates and Missteps: Australian Government Scholarships to the Pacific − 1948 to 2018 (Canberra: ANU Press, 2024).   ‘Are Australian universities racist?’ This was one of the main provocations of a recent PhD seminar where the student – a scholarship recipient from the Pacific Islands – expressed their frustration with […]
Book Review – Justice in Kelly Country: The Story of the Cop Who Hunted Australia’s Most Notorious Bushrangers

Book Review – Justice in Kelly Country: The Story of the Cop Who Hunted Australia’s Most Notorious Bushrangers

Matthew Allen reviews Lachlan Strahan, Justice in Kelly Country: The Story of the Cop Who Hunted Australia’s Most Notorious Bushrangers (Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 2022).   Justice in Kelly Country   is an engaging blend of family and police history. This is the story of Lachlan Strahan’s great-great grandfather, Senior Constable Anthony Strahan, and his career […]
Book Review – John Büsst: Bohemian artist and saviour of reef and rainforest

Book Review – John Büsst: Bohemian artist and saviour of reef and rainforest

Russell McGregor reviews Iain McCalman, John Büsst: Bohemian artist and saviour of reef and rainforest (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2024). 264pp + 8pp insert of colour and monochrome illustrations. ISBN 9781761170096 (Paperback), RRP $36.99.   Iain McCalman’s biography of John Büsst carries endorsements by a scintillating array of Australia’s historians. They’re well deserved, for this is […]
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 […]
Book Review – Crossed Lines: Disruption, Politics and Reshaping Australian Telecommunications

Book Review – Crossed Lines: Disruption, Politics and Reshaping Australian Telecommunications

Nicholas Brown reviews John Doyle’s Crossed Lines: Disruption, Politics and Reshaping Australian Telecommunications  (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2022).   Crossed Lines tracks an archetypical story in the undoing of the ‘Australian settlement’  – a ‘transition from a system of rigid state monopolies in the 1960s to a competition-based model in the 1990s’ (p.193). John Doyle’s […]