Uncategorized | Page 5 | Australian Policy and History Network

Book Review – The Morrison Government: Governing Through Crisis, 2019–2022: Australian Commonwealth Administration Series

Lyndon Megarrity reviews Brendan McCaffrie, Michelle Grattan and Chris Wallace’s (eds) The Morrison Government: Governing Through Crisis, 2019–2022: Australian Commonwealth Administration Series, (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2023), pp. viii +304. The Morrison Government: Governing Through Crisis, 2019–2022 is the fourteenth volume in the Australian Commonwealth Administration series of publications. This series brings together the contributions […]

Vale Allan Gyngell

By Meg Gurry Allan Gyngell made a lasting impact on many around him. I was fortunate enough to be one of them. I came across Allan most directly through his work at the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA). As President, he, with then National Director, Melissa Conley Tyler asked me to join a […]

Your body is a temple: The politics of junk food in Australia

By Richard Trembath I cannot advise all more spiritual natures too seriously to abstain from alcohol absolutely. Water suffices . . . No eating between meals, no coffee . . . Tea beneficial only in the morning. Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (1888), from the section called ‘Why I Am So Clever’. In this […]

Book Review – The Red Witch: A biography of Katherine Susannah Prichard

Joan Beaumont reviews Nathan Hobby’s The Red Witch: A biography of Katherine Susannah Prichard, Melbourne University Publishing, 2022, 451 pp. ISBN 9780522877380 By any measure Katherine Susannah Prichard (KSP) was a remarkable woman, full of contradictions. Most notably, she was a renowned and prolific author. After starting her career as a journalist in Melbourne, […]

Book Review – Safety Net: The Future of Welfare in Australia

Anthony O’Donnell reviews Daniel Mulino’s Safety Net: The Future of Welfare in Australia, La Trobe University Press, 2022 i + xii; 372pp What do we talk about when we talk about ‘the Australian welfare state’? For some, it’s almost a contradiction in terms. We have a minimalist, means-tested, flat-rate system of income supports that […]

Book Review – Wizards of Oz: How Oliphant and Florey Helped Win the War and Shape the Modern World

Peter Hobbins reviews Brett Mason’s Wizards of Oz: How Oliphant and Florey Helped Win the War and Shape the Modern World (Sydney: NewSouth, 2022), ISBN 9781742237459 (PB), $34.99. Dyadic biographies are – quite literally – many-headed beasts. Attempting to integrate the personalities and trajectories of two historical protagonists runs the risk of forced comparisons, […]

Will a preoccupation with party unity destroy the Liberal Party?

Cover image: Lukas Coch/AAP Carolyn Holbrook, Deakin University and James Walter, Monash University Such has been the turmoil over the Liberal Party’s recent decision to join the National Party in campaigning against the forthcoming referendum on the Voice to Parliament that even some of the most reliable supporters in the media have remarked on the […]

Q&A with Michelle Arrow, editor of Women and Whitlam: Revisiting the Revolution

Jacquelyn Baker interviews Michelle Arrow, editor of Women and Whitlam: Revisiting the Revolution (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2023). Congratulations on the publication of this book, Michelle! It is, in part, the product of the Women and Politics Conference, which was held at Old Parliament House in 2019. Can you explain to our readers why the […]

The Australian War Memorial must deal properly with the frontier wars

Carolyn Holbrook, Deakin University; Frank Bongiorno, Australian National University, and Michelle Arrow, Macquarie University The recent media rounds of the new chair of the Australian War Memorial Council, Kim Beazley, appear to presage a major shift in the institution’s attitude to the frontier wars. Beazley explained it is “enormously important” that the current $550 million […]

Book Review – Taking to the Field: A History of Australian Women in Science

James Keating reviews Jane Carey’s Taking to the Field: A History of Australian Women in Science (Melbourne: Monash University Press, 2023). In 1977 the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science (ANZAAS) held a symposium on ‘Women in Science’. Rather than accepting what many contemporaries considered a truth self-evident—that science had […]

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 […]

Book Review – Boundary Crossers: The Hidden History of Australia’s Other Bushrangers

Alana Piper reviews Meg Foster’s Boundary Crossers: The Hidden History of Australia’s Other Bushrangers (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2022). 9781742237527. 240pp. RRP $34.99. Meg Foster’s intricately researched monograph, Boundary Crossers: The Hidden History of Australia’s Other Bushrangers, took me back to the childhood road trips my family would take along the east coast of Australia. […]