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

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. […]
Policy Brief: Maximising the value of the New Colombo Plan

Policy Brief: Maximising the value of the New Colombo Plan

ATTENTION:  Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator the Hon Penny Wong Minister for Education, Hon Jason Clare MP   Purpose Ministers, it has been 11 years since the launch of the 2012 Australia in the Asian century: white paper, and nine years since the launch of the New Colombo Plan (NCP). Australia now faces a vastly […]
Book Review – The Australians at Geneva: Internationalist Diplomacy in the Interwar Years

Book Review – The Australians at Geneva: Internationalist Diplomacy in the Interwar Years

Joan Beaumont reviews James Cotton’s The Australians at Geneva: Internationalist Diplomacy in the Interwar Years, (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2022). ISBN 9780522878998 (paperback) 9780522879001 (e-book).   The League of Nations has been something of a poor relation in the historiography of Australian foreign policy. Traditionally, it has been tarred with its utter failure to check […]
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 […]
Book Review – The Australian History Industry

Book Review – The Australian History Industry

Deborah Lee-Talbot reviews Paul Ashton and Paula Hamilton, The Australian History Industry, (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2022).   The Australian History Industry is an ambitious book that covers the intersecting and often competing sectors that produce the various elements of this nation’s history. This book builds on earlier volumes that touch on this topic, […]
Q&A with Marion Stell, author of The Bodyline Fix

Q&A with Marion Stell, author of The Bodyline Fix

Jacquelyn Baker interviews Marion Stell about her recent book, The Bodyline Fix: How Women Saved Cricket (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2022). The book details the first international women’s Test cricket series between Australia and England in 1934-35, which followed the controversial Bodyline men’s series in 1932-33.   Congratulations on the publication of this […]
Policy Brief – Artificial Intelligence and Education

Policy Brief – Artificial Intelligence and Education

Lyndon Megarrity gives himself the task of recommending to the federal Labor government a national response to the potential use and/or misuse of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the state and territory education systems and within the higher education sector.   ATTENTION: Minister for Education, Hon Jason Clare MP The Prime Minister, the Hon Anthony Albanese […]