Stephens, David ‘Singing country: the musical legacy of David Morrison, Australian of the Year – and a straw in the wind at the Australian War Memorial?’, Honest History, 2 February 2016 The article looks at the story behind the song…
Schultz, Julianne, Anne Tiernan, et al.: Fixing the system
Schultz, Julianne, Anne Tiernan, et al. ‘Fixing the system‘, Griffith Review, 51, January 2016, available online to subscribers Collection of nearly thirty essays on how to foster ‘a society that really works’. Authors include the editors, Carmen Lawrence, Chris Wallace,…
Headon, David & John Uhr, ed.: Eureka: Australia’s greatest story
David Headon & John Uhr, ed. Eureka: Australia’s Greatest Story, Federation Press, Sydney, 2015; electronic version available Papers from a conference held in Canberra, December 2014, plus some additional papers. The editors of this book boldly proclaim that Eureka is…
Five (now nine) links to finish off Australia Day – but no fireworks
Update: 27 January 2016 More came through today on Australia Day and related matters. There was: a video on Guardian Australia of Indigenous protest rallies to mark Invasion Day; a music critic, Andy Hazel, punting for 12 ‘classic’ Australian songs…
Kelly, Sean: Let’s celebrate Australia but not on 26 January
Kelly, Sean ‘It’s time to change our traditions: let’s celebrate Australia – but not on 26 January‘, The Monthly Today, 25 January 2016 One of a number of articles (this year and previous years) on the theme of finding a…
Pilger, John: Australia’s day for secrets, flags and cowards
Pilger, John ‘Australia’s day for secrets, flags and cowards‘, New Matilda, 23 January 2016 The original Australians are the oldest human presence. To the European invaders, they did not exist because their continent had been declared terra nullius: empty land. To…
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Stan Grant speech on racism and the Australian Dream gets a well-deserved run for Australia Day
As reported in Guardian Australia (and in the Sydney Morning Herald and Junkee) going viral today is a You Tube video of a great speech made by Indigenous journalist Stan Grant in a debate in Sydney. Grant argues for the…
Organ, Michael K.: Governor Macquarie’s Aboriginal War of 1816
Organ, Michael K. ‘Secret service: Governor Macquarie’s Aboriginal War of 1816: Proceedings of the National Conference of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Mittagong, 25-26 October 2014‘, University of Wollongong Research Online Detailed analysis of Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s punitive actions against…
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Browne, Peter: Postwar boomer (RG Menzies 50 years on)
Browne, Peter ‘Postwar boomer‘, Inside Story, 18 January 2016 Long essay looking back from Sir Robert Menzies’ retirement 50 years ago to the events of his 16-year reign (and even glances at his earlier time in office in 1939-41). Menzies…
Macken, Julie: Long journey to Nauru
Macken, Julie ‘The long journey to Nauru‘, New Matilda, 12 January 2016 Long article by former MSM (Financial Review) journalist on the history of Australian policy towards asylum seekers over the last 30 years or so. 30 years ago, it…
Wilkie, Douglas: Melbourne reacts to Bathurst gold discoveries, 1851
Wilkie, Douglas ‘Exodus and panic: Melbourne’s reaction to the Bathurst gold discoveries of May 1851‘, Victorian Historical Journal, 85, 2, December 2014, pp. 189-218 Sober consideration of the evidence confirms what was known at the time – that reactions to…
O’Regan, Tom: Kenneth Slessor, poet and movie critic
O’ Regan, Tom ‘Kenneth Slessor goes to the movies‘, Inside Story, 4 January 2016 Renowned Australian poet and war correspondent, Kenneth Slessor, also liked going to ‘the pictures’ and writing about it in a special way, according to O’Regan in…
Vaughan, Jill, Katie Jepson & Rosey Billington: Different words, same things
Vaughan, Jill, Katie Jepson & Rosey Billington ‘Togs or swimmers? Why Australians use different words to describe the same things‘, The Conversation, 5 January 2016 Uses maps to show the different words used by Australians to describe common items. It’s…
Latimore, Jack et al: New News 2015: From the ground up: New Media and Indigenous reporting
Latimore, Jack, Allan Clarke, Paul Daley, Amy McQuire, and Steve Hodder Watt ‘New News 2015: From the ground up: New Media and Indigenous reporting’, Wheeler Centre, 10 October 2015 One hour video of panel discussion, chaired by Latimore, who is…
Honest History Christmas miscellany 2015: lots to read and ponder
‘Honest History Christmas miscellany 2015: lots to read and ponder’, Honest History, 20 December 2015 Christmas often brings a reckoning and it is the same in our compact little enterprise. We would have loved to have afforded some of the…
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Three essays on the Cronulla riots 10 years on
Update 14 December 2015: the World Socialist Web Site weighs in with some detailed analysis of the court decision on the proposed Cronulla commemorative barbecue by the Party for Freedom. WSWS has also sent us a link to its 2006…
Vatsikopoulos, Helen: Australian women war reporters (review of Baker)
Vatsikopoulos, Helen ‘Australian Women War Reporters review: how female journalists made it to battle‘, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 December 2015 Reviews Jeannine Baker’s Australian Women War Reporters: Boer War to Vietnam. Australian women journalists might have been granted equal pay…
Grishin, Sasha: Tom Roberts at the National Gallery of Australia
Grishin, Sasha ‘Art review: Tom Roberts at the National Gallery of Australia, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 December 2015 Reviews the recently opened exhibition, which is open until March 2016. The chief aim of this exhibition is to take a fresh…
Whiteford, Peter: is welfare sustainable?
Whiteford, Peter ‘Is welfare sustainable?‘ Inside Story, 22 November 2015 Looks at recent government statements about social services expenditure then moves on to detailed historical consideration of the issue. Most of the graphs go back to 1995 and cover, for…
Eureka 161 years on: Honest History miscellany
‘Eureka 161 years on: Honest History miscellany’, Honest History, 1 December 2015 Thursday this week, 3 December, is the 161st anniversary of Eureka. Honest History has collected resources on Eureka over the last couple of years and here are links…
Bongiorno, Frank: The Eighties: Decade that Transformed Australia
Bongiorno, Frank The Eighties: The Decade that Transformed Australia, Black Inc, Collingwood, Vic, 2015; hardback and electronic It was the era of Hawke and Keating, Kylie and INXS, the America’s Cup and the Bicentenary. It was perhaps the most controversial…
The eighties in nine chapters (review of Bongiorno)
‘The eighties in nine chapters’ (review of Bongiorno), Honest History, 1 December 2015 Janet Wilson* reviews The Eighties: The Decade that Transformed Australia by Frank Bongiorno __________________________ Among the words and phrases that entered the lexicon in the 1980s are…
Do we really have an ‘egalitarian, fair-go culture’?
Last night the prime minister told Leigh Sales on 7.30 that Australia had a ‘strong, egalitarian, fair-go culture’ and that whatever was done with tax reform had to fit with that culture. Is the prime minister too boffo about our…
Anzac, Lest We Forget feature in Reclaim Australia rallies
Small Reclaim Australia rallies in a number of centres at the weekend were notable for featuring Anzac-related slogans and flags. At Melton, near Melbourne, Reclaim Australia demonstrators carried a banner bearing poppies, silhouettes of marching troops and the words ‘Lest…
Stayner, Guy: 70 000 photos of 1970s Victoria going online
Stayner, Guy ‘State Library makes public up to 70,000 never-seen photos of Melbourne and country Victoria‘, ABC News, 18 November 2015 The SLV has begun digitising rolls of film taken of streets, houses and other buildings in Melbourne and rural…
Woolombi Waters, Marcus: Australia is a nation of white privilege
Woolombi Waters, Marcus ‘Whether you’re listening or not, Australia is a nation of white privilege‘, The Conversation, 17 November 2015 The author is a Kamilaroi man who has recently returned from travelling overseas for work. This article received more than…
Bottoms, Timothy: Cairns: city of the South Pacific
Bottoms, Timothy Cairns: City of the South Pacific: a History 1770-1995, Bunu Bunu Press, Cairns, 2015 The township of Cairns was established in the wake of the Palmer River Gold rush of 1873, and established as a port for the…
Smith, Evan: Australia and the fascist idea of Greater Britain
Smith, Evan ‘Australia and the fascist idea of Greater Britain‘, Imperial & Global Forum, 9 November 2015 Guest blog by an Australian scholar. Shows how important to Oswald Mosley’s 1930s British Union of Fascists (BUF) was to the maintenance of…
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Cashen, Phil: anti-German sentiment in Gippsland 1915
Cashen, Phil ‘Anti-German sentiment in the Shire of Alberton to the end of 1915‘, Shire at War, 7 November 2015 Thorough local research from this Gippsland-based blogger on the degree that people used the anti-German hysteria to flaunt their patriotism.…
Wilkie, Benjamin: continent of smoke
Wilkie, Benjamin ‘This continent of smoke‘, Meanjin, 3 November 2015 The article looks back from an impending El Nino episode to the historic effects of fire on Victoria’s Western District. In some parts–and it’s a story replicated across the country–the…
Jakubowicz, Andrew: we need a Multiculturalism Act
Jakubowicz, Andrew ‘How national multicultural legislation would strengthen Australian society‘, The Conversation, 5 November 2015 The author looks at 40 years of history of how governments, state and federal, have dealt with multiculturalism. He finds they have lacked ‘the courage…
Inequality becoming a bigger issue for Australians
We noted the latest Scanlon Foundation Social Cohesion Survey report. There was an interesting result on this question at page 44 of the report: ‘In Australia today, the gap between those with high incomes and those with low incomes is too large’. Of respondents…
Markus, Andrew: Scanlon Foundation Social Cohesion Survey 2015
Markus, Andrew ‘Social cohesion survey puts Abbott’s final months as PM in a new light‘, The Conversation, 29 October 2015 The author runs this annual survey and here summarises its main findings this time around. Links to the full report…
Tony Abbott 2015 and Enoch Powell 1968: compare and contrast
Update 20 September 2019: Ferdinand Mount on Powell Readers of a certain age and erudition will be aware of the ‘rivers of blood’ speech by senior British Conservative, Enoch Powell, in 1968. Powell warned of the dangers of ‘coloured’ and…
Monteath, Peter & Valerie Munt: Red Professor
Monteath, Peter & Valerie Munt Red Professor: the Cold War Life of Fred Rose, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 2015 Fred Rose’s life takes us through rip-roaring tales from Australia’s northern frontier to enthralling intellectual tussles over kinship systems and political dramas…
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Lever, Susan: Lawrence’s Australian experiment
Lever, Susan ‘Lawrence’s Australian experiment‘, Inside Story, 22 October 2015 Almost a century on, there is still a nagging feeling that DH Lawrence, in some ways the archetypal ‘Pom passing through’ (he was here for just three months), still ‘got’…
Online gem No. 2: Royalty in the Australian Women’s Weekly
Online gem No. 2: Royalty in the Australian Women’s Weekly (13 October 2015) In September 2015 Queen Elizabeth II became the longest-reigning monarch in British history. During the Queen’s long reign many Australians have maintained a particular fascination with her…
Online gem No. 1: Myall Creek Massacre
The Myall Creek massacre of June 1838 led to the death of 28 Aboriginal men, women and children and to the trial of 11 of their white assailants. Seven were found guilty and were executed in December 1838. The first…
Hardie, Giles: Australians’ addiction to family dramas
Hardie, Giles ‘Why Australians are addicted to family dramas‘, New Daily, 7 October 2015 Summaries of 40 years of the ‘most iconic’ Australian TV soap operas. As a country, we’ve long loved drama series but our family dramas have a special…
Delaney, Brigid: Cold Chisel’s unofficial national anthems
Delaney, Brigid ‘Cold Chisel: writing Australia’s unofficial national anthems since 1973‘, Guardian Australia, 6 October 2015 Historical look at the songs of an Australian rock band. Cold Chisel’s lyrics always felt like stories – Carveresque with an Australian accent –…
The Dunera Boys 75 years on: Dunera News No. 95
Dunera News, No. 95, October 2015 This long-standing publication tracks the progress of a group of men and boys of even longer standing, those who came to Australia in 1940 on the vessel HMT Dunera. They had been rounded up…
Burnside, Julian: what sort of country are we?
Burnside, Julian ‘What sort of country are we?‘ The Conversation, 29 September 2015 Article based on the Hamer Oration, delivered 28 September. Examines incidents in Australia’s treatment of refugees over the last decade and a half, considering Tampa, the Pacific…
Inequality news keeps breaking over our ‘egalitarian’ homeland
The excellent online publication The Conversation provides an opportunity for academics of sprightly mind to engage in evidence-based public debate and get their views to a large, mostly non-academic audience. (Audience figures here are not too shabby, with a claim…
Arrow, Michelle: Damned Whores and God’s Police 40 years on
Arrow, Michelle ‘Damned Whores and God’s Police is still relevant to Australia 40 years on – more’s the pity‘, The Conversation, 21 September 2015 The article marks four decades since Anne Summers’ book. A conference is under way. Anne Summers’…
Manne, Anne, Robyn Davidson & Raimond Gaita: films from books
[Manne, Anne, Robyn Davidson & Raimond Gaita] ‘Words and images: Robyn Davidson and Raimond Gaita on film adaptation‘, The Monthly, 21 September 2015 In this La Trobe University Ideas and Society event at the Bendigo Writers Festival 2015, authors Robyn…
Jericho, Greg: poorest will go under as living standards ebb
Jericho, Greg ‘As the “rising tide” of living standards starts to ebb, the poorest will go under‘, Guardian Australia, 19 September 2015 Close summary analysis of the NATSEM report recently released. See also our collection of material on inequality, with…
Hynd, Doug: St Mark’s remembers Anzac Day (review)
Hynd, Doug ‘St Mark’s remembers Anzac Day’, Honest History, 19 September 2015 Doug Hynd reviews the April 2015 issue of St Mark’s Review, published by St Mark’s National Theological Centre, Canberra. The table of contents of the issue are here…
St Mark’s remembers Anzac Day
‘St Mark’s remembers Anzac Day’, Honest History, 19 September 2015 Doug Hynd reviews the April 2015 issue of St Mark’s Review __________________________ This thematic issue ‘St Mark’s remembers’ on ‘remembering Anzac Day’ is, in the best sense of the term,…
Phillips, Ben: living standard trends in Australia
Phillips, Ben Living Standard Trends in Australia: Report for Anglicare Australia, NATSEM, University of Canberra, September 1915 The report compares the living standards of different household types across the country: how they have changed since 2004 and how they are…
Gorman, Sean, et al.: Griffith Review: Indigenous writing
Gorman, Sean, et al ‘Indigenous writing’, Griffith Review We apologise for not discovering this portal earlier. It links (at the time of posting, September 2015) to 54 articles from Griffith Review on Indigenous affairs and another 33 articles from the…
Froggatt, Emma: Australian Life prize 2015 (photographs)
Froggatt, Emma ‘Australian Life prize 2015: the colour, the joy, the weird and wonderful – in pictures‘, Guardian Australia, 2 September 2015 Finalists in this photographic exhibition, which is on in Sydney from 18 September to 11 October. There is…
Last orders, Mr James (review of Clive James’ Latest Readings)
‘Last orders, Mr James’, Honest History, 1 September 2015 Paddy Gourley* reviews Clive James, Latest Readings If Clive James had written nothing other than his book Cultural Amnesia he would have secured a prominent place in Australian letters. It’s a…
Summers, Julie: Fashion on the ration: style in the Second World War
Summers, Julie Fashion on the Ration: Style in the Second World War, Profile Books, London, 2015 From the young woman who avoided the dreaded ‘forces bloomers’ by making knickers from military-issue silk maps, to Vogue’s indomitable editor Audrey Withers, who…
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Finding a thing to wear during World War II (review of Julie Summers)
‘Finding a thing to wear during World War II’, Honest History, 1 September 2015 Janet Wilson* reviews Fashion on the Ration: Style in the Second World War by Julie Summers This book accompanied an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum…
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James, Clive: Latest Readings
James, Clive Latest Readings, Yale University Press, New Haven CT & London, 2015 In 2010, Clive James was diagnosed with terminal leukemia. Deciding that “if you don’t know the exact moment when the lights will go out, you might as…
Inequality – six of the best from Andrew Leigh MP: highlights reel
‘Inequality – six of the best from Andrew Leigh, MP: highlights reel’, Honest History, 1 September 2015 updated Inequality has been a special interest of Honest History, as we have noted the procession of reporting organisations confirming Australia’s growing reputation…
Cowlishaw, Gillian: anthropology and Aborigines
Cowlishaw, Gillian ‘Friend or foe? anthropology’s encounter with Aborigines‘, Inside Story, 19 August 2015 A reassessment of classical anthropological research (1890s to mid twentieth century). Condemnation of objectionable aspects of colonial power structures should not preclude appreciation of this research.…
Reid, Elizabeth: Maintaining the rage (Whitlam and women)
Reid, Elizabeth ‘Maintaining the rage: address to Vintage Reds, Canberra, 16 June 2015‘, Vintage Reds Elizabeth Reid was the first women’s adviser to an Australian prime minister, appointed by Gough Whitlam in 1973. There is more about her here and…
Rollo, Stuart: anti-semitic slogans on WWI memorial
Rollo, Stuart ‘In the most unlikely of places, anti-semitic tropes find new life‘, New Matilda, 11 August 2015 The author notes slogans ‘Victims of the Rothschilds’ on signs at the Light Horse Interchange, a war memorial road exchange at Eastern…
Rollison, Kay: Hugh Stretton remembered
Rollison, Kay ‘Book review: Ideas for Australian Cities, by Hugh Stretton‘, Australian Independent Media Network, 11 August 2015 Marks the death last month at 91 of Australian public intellectual, Hugh Stretton, author of the pioneering The Political Sciences (1969), Ideas…
Sparrow, Jeff: owning up to our black history
Sparrow, Jeff ‘If black lives really matter in Australia, it’s time we owned up to our history’, Guardian Australia, 7 August 2015 Weaves together Adam Goodes, the ‘Black Lives Matter’ campaign in the United States, the treatment of Pacific Islander…
Glover, Dennis: unmaking of Australian working class
Glover, Dennis ‘The unmaking of the Australian working class – and their right to resist‘, The Conversation, 3 August 2015 An edited extract from the author’s book, An Economy is Not a Society: Winners and Losers in the New Australia.…
War Census 1915 (Part II)
‘The War Census of 1915: Honest History highlights reel (Part II)’, Honest History, 4 August 2015 War worries are added to by the census, which probes into the pockets and the soul of every citizen, asking him in plain print…
Two Australians of the Year: highlights reel
‘Two Australians of the Year: highlights reel’, Honest History, 1 August 2015 Adam Goodes, AFL footballer and Indigenous activist, was Australian of the Year 2013. Rosie Batty, mother and domestic violence activist, was Australian of the Year 2014. Both have…
If not the Bush then what?
These four quotes from our Whizzbangs collection suggest that, while the Bush may have made us, we’ve moved on to drier country. We ignite Whizzbangs in our monthly newsletters. Before. ‘It is easy enough to see why men went to the…
Griffiths, Tom: on Graeme Davison’s Lost Relations
Griffiths, Tom ‘The story behind the story’, Inside Story, 24 July 2015 A long essay on Graeme Davison’s new book, Lost Relations: Fortunes of My Family in Australia’s Golden Age, which also provokes musings by Griffiths about the nature of…
Ørsted-Jensen, Robert: Website of resources related to his book Frontier History Revisited
Robert Ørsted-Jensen Webpage of resources related to his book Frontier History Revisited Brings together a collection of resources related to the author’s 2011 book, Frontier History Revisited: Colonial Queensland and the History War. There are extracts from the book, as well…
Kalagian Blunt, Ashley: life after genocide
Ashley Kalagian Blunt ‘Life after genocide: legacies of a shattered culture‘, Griffith Review, July 2015 A Canadian-Armenian now living in Australia examines her heritage and touches on Australian connections as well. She notes how the Armenian genocide provided lessons for…
Edgar, Bill: Western Australian convicts
Edgar, Bill ‘The Western Australian convicts: a crucial phase in the British convict transportation phenomenon‘, Honest History, 19 July 2015 Much has been handed down about the severity and iniquities of the Australian convict system, but much has been falsely…
Kidd, Briony: Australian female film directors
Kidd, Briony ‘Reading between the credits for Australian women directors‘, SBS Movies, 14 July 2015 Asks why women film-makers are consistently overlooked in Australian cinema. Examines possible answers to this question, looks at some history, discusses the work of many…
Tavan, Gwenda: Immigration Department nation-building
Tavan, Gwenda ‘Remembering the “old” Department of Immigration’s nation-building traditions‘, The Conversation, 14 July 2015 As the old Immigration department merges with the Customs service to form a fully-fledged border protection operation, this article (and two associated ones linked to…
Daley, Paul: aboriginal activist AM Fernando in London
Daley, Paul ‘Anthony Martin Fernando: the Aboriginal activist who took his people’s fight to London‘, Guardian Australia, 3 July 2015 [Fernando] is probably the first Indigenous Australian to dedicate his life to activism in Europe … His attempt to petition…
War Census 1915 (Part I)
‘The War Census of 1915: Honest History highlights reel (Part I)’, Honest History, 7 July 2015 Some historians and observers say that Gallipoli saw the birth of the Australian nation as men flocked to the colours. Others argue that the…
Torre, Dan: century of Australian animation
Torre, Dan ‘From ads to Oscar winners: a century of Australian animation‘, The Conversation, 26 June 2015 2015 is one hundred years since Harry Julius began ‘Cartoons of the Moment’, animations accompanying feature films shown in Australia and New Zealand.…
Moore, Tony: Australian-style cultural subversion
Moore, Tony ‘Larrikin carnival: an Australian style of cultural subversion‘, The Conversation, 23 June 2015 The article is based on an essay in the collection On Happiness, which launched this month. I want to recast happiness as a form of…
ACOSS: inequality in Australia
ACOSS Inequality in Australia: a Nation Divided, Australian Council of Social Services, Strawberry Hills, NSW, 2015 Summary of key findings Income Inequality Inequality in Australia is higher than the OECD average – a person in the top 20% income group…
Kerkhove, Ray: Fortified frontiers and white and black tactics
Kerkhove, Ray ‘Barriers and bastions: fortified frontiers and white and black tactics: paper presented at “Our shared history: resistance and reconciliation”, CQU seminar, Noosa, 11 June 2015‘, Honest History, 22 June 2015 Nineteenth century Australia had fortifications erected to protect…
Oliver, Alex: Lowy Institute Poll 2015
Oliver, Alex ‘Lowy Institute Poll 2015‘, Lowy Institute, 16 June 2015 KEY FINDINGS:This year’s Poll has recorded the lowest feeling of safety among Australians, and the sharpest decline in optimism about the nation’s economic performance in the world, in our…
Curby, Pauline: Urban myth or surfing history?
Curby, Pauline ‘An urban myth or surfing history?‘, Honest History, 17 June 2015 The author explores the story surrounding a famous change to the rules regarding sea-bathing in pre-Great War Sydney. As this story is part of our surfing history,…
Urban myth or surfing history?
Pauline Curby ‘An urban myth or surfing history?’ Honest History, 17 June 2015 The Australian Dictionary of Biography is a marvellous resource, especially since it has been available online. Written by a wide range of authors, its entries sometimes require…
Magna Carta miscellany
‘Magna Carta miscellany’, Honest History, 9 June 2015 Update 8 July 2015: Malcolm Turnbull on Magna Carta and related issues. Update 15 June 2015: leader from the Guardian with the interesting title of ‘the magic of myth’. _________________________ Next Monday,…
War dances and real wars: Honest History First Peoples miscellany
‘War dances and real wars: Honest History First Peoples miscellany’, Honest History, 7 June 2015 Update 8 June 2015: Helen Davidson writes about Wayne Quilliam’s photographs of and interviews with the women of Indigenous Australia. Quilliam’s exhibition opens at UN…
Atkinson, Alan: Europeans in Australia Vol. 3: Nation
Atkinson, Alan The Europeans in Australia, Volume 3: Nation, NewSouth, Sydney, 2014 Follows Volume 1: The Beginning (1997) and Volume 2: Democracy (2004). This is the third and final volume of the landmark, award-winning series The Europeans in Australia that gives an…
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Dyrenfurth, Nick: Mateship
Dyrenfurth, Nick Mateship: A Very Australian History, Scribe, Brunswick, Vic., 2014 In the first book-length exploration of our secular creed, one of Australia’s leading young historians and public commentators turns mateship’s history upside down. Did you know that the first…
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Offord, Baden et al.: Inside Australian culture
Offord, Baden, Erika Kerruish, Rob Garbutt, Adele Wessel & Kirsten Pavlovic Inside Australian Culture: Legacies of Enlightenment Values, Anthem Press, London, 2014 Given Australia’s status as an (unfinished) colonial project of the British Empire, the basic institutions that were installed…
Wilson, AN: The Book of the People
Wilson, AN The Book of the People: How to Read the Bible, Atlantic Books, London, 2015 A. N. Wilson has been thinking about the Bible, and reading it, since he read theology for a year at university. Martin Luther King…
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Still the good book? (review of AN Wilson)
‘Still the good book?’ Honest History, 27 May 2015 David Stephens reviews AN Wilson’s The Book of the People: How to Read the Bible My grandmother was 96 when she died. Her eulogy mentioned that she had read her Bible…
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Steffen, Will: Climate change and extreme heat
Steffen, Will Quantifying the Effect of Climate Change on Extreme Heat in Australia, Climate Council of Australia, Sydney, 2015 Key findings: climate change is making Australia hotter; climate change has significantly worsened recent extreme heat events in Australia; the case…
Meyrick, Julian: Australian plays and questioning the nation’s soul
Meyrick, Julian ‘Australian plays: how to persuade a nation to question its own soul?‘ The Conversation, 12 May 2015 The fourth in a series of long essays on Australian play-writing. The earlier ones are linked from this article. I could…
OECD: In it together: why less inequality benefits all … in Australia
OECD In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All … in Australia, OECD, 21 May 2015 This is the Australia-oriented summary takeout from a broader OECD project. The material at the link includes graphs on income inequality trends and a…
Stephens, David: ‘The Next War’: two speeches on Australia 2015
Stephens, David ‘”The Next War”: two speeches on Australia 2015’, Honest History, 23 May 2015 The first speech, ‘Anzac and the militarisation of Australian society‘, was given at Politics in the Pub, Glebe, on 9 April 2015. It discussed Anzac…
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Militarism, fascism, Anzacism: Australian progress report 2015
David Stephens ‘Militarism, fascism, Anzacism: an Australian progress report 2015: speech to Solidarity Forum, University of Technology, Sydney, 9 May 2015’, Honest History, 23 May 2015 (For an associated speech.) I acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, the…
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Anzac and the militarisation of Australian society
David Stephens ‘Anzac and the militarisation of Australian society: Politics in the Pub, Glebe, 9 April 2015’, Honest History, 23 May 2015 (A video of the speech is on the Politics in the Pub website. Q&A. An associated speech.) I…
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Their centenary country: Honest History First Peoples miscellany
‘Their centenary country: Honest History First Peoples miscellany’, Honest History, 20 May 2015 and updated (Note: this article contains references to Indigenous people who have died.) Updates: More from Frank Brennan. A further article from Nolan Hunter on recognition. Roslyn…
Daley, Paul: Australian War Memorial’s rise and rise
Daley, Paul ‘Australian War Memorial: the remarkable rise and rise of the nation’s secular shrine‘, Guardian Australia, 19 May 2015 Lengthy extracts of interview with Director Brendan Nelson. He touches on the AWM’s tourism pulling power (one ahead of the…
Batt, Peter J. et al: pillars of the economy
Batt, Peter J. et al ‘Five pillar economy,’ The Conversation, 27 April-11 May 2015 The articles take up a 2013 theme of prime minister Abbott (‘the five pillar economy’) and look at agriculture (Batt), education (Michael Coelli), mining (Anne Garnett),…
CEDA: entrenched economic disadvantage in Australia
Committee for Economic Development of Australia Addressing Economic Disadvantage in Australia, CEDA, Melbourne, 2015 This report was released on 21 April 2015. It was described as ‘a policy perspective examining issues associated with the economics of disadvantage’. In other words,…
Dunbar, Raden: Secrets of the Anzacs – Great War VD
Dunbar, Raden The Secrets of the Anzacs: the Untold Story of Venereal Disease in the Australian Army, 1914-1919, Scribe, Brunswick, Vic., 2014 During World War I, about 60 000 soldiers of the Australian Imperial Force were treated for venereal diseases,…
La nef des fous: review of Dunbar’s Secrets of the Anzacs
‘La nef des fous: review of Dunbar’s Secrets of the Anzacs‘, Honest History, 12 May 2015 Diane Bell* reviews Raden Dunbar, The Secrets of the ANZACS: the Untold Story of Venereal Disease in the Australian Army, 1914-1919. (La nef des…
National Museum of Australia: Home front exhibition
National Museum of Australia The Home Front: Australia during the First World War The exhibition opened on 3 April 2015 and will run till 11 October. The Home Front explores the pride, sorrow, passion, wonder and joy experienced by Australians far…
Gamut of emotions: the Home Front at the National Museum
‘Gamut of emotions: the Home Front at the National Museum’, Honest History, 12 May 2015 Michael Piggott reviews the National Museum of Australia’s exhibition, The Home Front. Here’s a challenge to think about over the next ten minutes. If you…
Keating, Michael & John Menadue, ed.: Fairness, opportunity and security
Keating, Michael & John Menadue, ed. ‘Fairness, opportunity and security: a policy series‘, Pearls and Irritations, 11 May 2015 (updated) Update 27 May 2015: There have been 20 or so papers already on democratic renewal, the role of government, foreign…
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McQueen, Humphrey: Spanish flu pandemic Australia 1912-19
McQueen, Humphrey ‘The “Spanish” influenza pandemic in Australia, 1912-19’, Jill Roe, ed., Social Policy in Australia: some Perspectives 1901-1975, Cassell Australia, Stanmore NSW, 1976, pp. 131-147 (pdf of out-of-copyright material made available by the author) This article was originally delivered…
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McAuley, Ian: Australia’s ‘big government’ myth
McAuley, Ian ‘Busting the myth that Australia has “big government”‘, The Conversation, 8 May 2015 The reality is that Australia’s public expenditure, as a percentage of GDP, has shown no discernible upward trend for the last 35 years, and that…
Reid, David: Reconciliation, please, but don’t mention the war
Reid, David ‘Reconciliation, please, but don’t mention the war‘, Honest History, 6 May 2015 Canberran David Reid recalls a family history incident and reflects on how we remember some of our wars but not others. The magical but as yet…
Reconciliation, please, but don’t mention the war
David Reid* ‘Reconciliation, please, but don’t mention the war’, Honest History, 6 May 2015 I pen this as a descendant of a Scottish surgeon who came by ship to Terra Australis 195 years ago. His son, who arrived with him…
ABC News 24 One-plus-One: with Clare Wright
ABC TV ‘Clare Wright‘, ABC News 24 One-plus-One, 24 April 2015 (video only) Historian Clare Wright talks with Jane Hutcheon about her early life, her early work on women in the liquor industry, her Stella Prize-winning book The Forgotten Rebels…
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Freedom of speech in Burwood: Honest History Factsheet
Update 7 May 2015: further light shed Open letter by Socialist Equality Party to University of Sydney. Update 28 April 2015: meetings held The Socialist Equality Party meetings were held, with audiences of workers and youth. Update 2.30 pm 18…
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Honest History list: Armenian genocide
UPDATE 29 July 2015: Ashley Kalagian Blunt writes about coming to terms with the genocide in Canada and Australia. UPDATE 18 June 2015: Nikki Marczak writes on how what is happening today in the Middle East repeats many historical events…
Mutton, Katy: Post War project
Mutton, Katy The Post War Project The Post War Project is a year-long art/research project being undertaken by Australian Visual Artist Katy Mutton over 2015. It is a year of research and art making based largely around the Australian Soldier Settlement scheme…
Gallipoli: a necessary mythology?
Bill Edgar ‘Gallipoli: a necessary mythology?’ Honest History, 13 April 2015 Some years ago a group of history students were discussing the proposition of a group of psychologists that it is an emotional imperative for individuals to ally themselves with…
Edgar, Bill: Gallipoli: a necessary mythology?
Edgar, Bill ‘Gallipoli: a necessary mythology?‘ Honest History, 14 April 2015 The author compares the lives of two Lalors in order to ask whether we are neglecting our heritage from the 19th century. For the next four years we will…
Neuhaus, Susan & Sharon Mascall-Dare: Not for Glory
Neuhaus, Susan & Sharon Mascall-Dare Not for Glory: a Century of Service by Medical Women to the Australian Army and its Allies, Boolarong Press, Brisbane, 2014 From the trenches of the Western Front to the ricefields and jungles of South-east…
Medical women at war: Not for Glory reviewed
‘Medical women in war’, Honest History, 14 April 2015 Carolyn Holbrook reviews Susan J. Neuhaus and Sharon Mascall-Dare, Not for Glory: a Century of Service by Medical Women to the Australian Army and its Allies When Dr Agnes Bennett tried…
McQueen, Humphrey: the novels of Eleanor Dark (1973)
McQueen, Humphrey ‘The novels of Eleanor Dark’, Hemisphere, 17, 1, January 1973, pp. 38-41 (pdf of out-of-copyright material made available by the author) The piece is interesting as a relatively early discussion of this writer (1901-85) and as an indication…
What is the state for?
‘A good society is one characterised by a collective concern with social justice and a capacity to act in pursuit of that objective. That this case even has to be made is symptomatic of the pervasive influence of neoliberalism during the…
The benefits of banking oligopoly
‘The Australian banking industry is the most concentrated in the world and also the most profitable. In fact the “big four” Australian banks make up four of the eight most profitable banks in the world. The big banks have conceded that…
Honest History list: boozing cricketers/boozing Anzac
Australian cricketers’ booze-soaked celebrations (here, here) after winning the World Cup provoked some commentary. Michael Thorn, chief executive of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, noted not only the focus on alcohol-fuelled celebration by team members and by commentator and…
Daley, Paul: Indigenous Diggers and Anzackery
Daley, Paul ‘Indigenous Diggers and the new age of Anzackery‘, Meanjin, 2 April 2015 Contrasts the commemorative festival with the treatment of an atypical Indigenous Digger, caught between cultures. The opening paragraphs are a good summary of the history of…
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Honest History list: taking pictures
There have been a few interesting items recently on photography and things on screens so we cobbled together this list along with a few things that were on the site already. It’s the sort of thing we do at Honest…
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Oppenheimer, Melanie: 100 years of Red Cross
Oppenheimer, Melanie The Power of Humanity: 100 Years of Australian Red Cross, Harper Collins, Sydney, 2014 This is the story of everyday Australians. It is a history of people helping people across “generations, united by a common passion and commitment…
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Berzins, Hannah: Lest we forget the Frontier Wars
Berzins, Hannah ‘Lest we forget the Frontier Wars‘, Vimeo (video, 2014) The 2o minute video describes massacres at Murdering Island and Poison Waterholes Creek, near Narrandera, NSW, and considers how such events, and the Frontier Wars generally, should be commemorated.…
Donegan, John: Australian digital montages 1914-2014
Donegan, John ‘Australian transitions 1914-2014: Digital montages from pre-war cities to a 21st century nation‘, ABC News, 29 July 2014 Montages of 1914 scenes with shots of the same locations in 2014 in seven Australian cities and nationally. Dozens of…
Diamond, Marion: Hangman’s rope
Diamond, Marion ‘The hangman’s rope‘, Historians are Past Caring, 22 February 2015 Inspired by imminent executions in Indonesia, the article recalls the hanging of Ronald Ryan in Melbourne in 1967 and goes much further back to the history of hanging…
Harman, Kristyn & Elizabeth Grant: Restraining Aboriginal people
Harman, Kristyn & Elizabeth Grant ‘“Impossible to detain … without chains”? The use of restraints on Aboriginal people in policing and prisons‘, History Australia, 11, 3, 2014, pp. 157-176 The use of restraints on Australian Aboriginal people had its inception…
Thompson, Janna: Assault on the life of a people
Thompson, Janna ‘An assault on the life of a people‘, Inside Story, 23 February 2015 Almost one hundred years ago, in the midst of the first world war, Ottoman officials forced Armenian people living in Anatolia to leave their homes…
McQueen, Humphrey: Australian women in the early 1980s
McQueen, Humphrey ‘The hand that pours the gin’, Gone Tomorrow: Australia in the 80s, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1982, chapter 8 (pdfs of out-of-copyright material made available by the author) The chapter uses the medium of women’s magazines to show…
National development
‘Our success as a nation has come from rewarding clever investment, innovation and ideas. We have sustained high real wages throughout our history by encouraging growth and avoiding a flood of unskilled immigrants which fuels rampant inequality.’ (Angus Taylor, Liberal…
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Daley, Paul: Fight for Indigenous relics
Daley, Paul ‘”It taunts us spiritually”: the fight for Indigenous relics spirited off to the UK‘, Guardian Australia, 14 February 2015 Updates the battle by Indigenous Australians to return to Australia relics taken to England by collectors in the nineteenth…
Wright, Clare: birth of Australian nation
Wright, Clare ‘”A splendid object lesson”: a transnational perspective on the birth of the Australian nation‘, Journal of Women’s History, 26, 4, Winter 2014, pp. 12-36 Author-supplied pdf (use Adobe Tools button >> to rotate pages!) Historians have attributed the…
ABC The World Today: Veterans sleeping rough
ABC ‘One in 10 people sleeping rough in Melbourne are war veterans‘, The World Today, 6 January 2015 Interview (transcript, audio) with spokespersons for Homeground, a support organisation, and the RSL. Most of the veterans sleeping rough served in Iraq…
Tiffen, Rodney: Strategic omissions: Howard on Menzies
Tiffen, Rodney ‘Strategic omissions‘, Inside Story, 29 January 2015 A review of John Howard’s The Menzies Era: the Years that Shaped Modern Australia. The greatest appeal of the book is that it is written from the perspective of an experienced…
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Howard, John: Menzies era
Howard, John The Menzies Era: the Years that Shaped Modern Australia, Harper Collins, Sydney, 2014, e-book available Our longest-serving prime minister considered by our second longest-serving. There is a sample at the link above and here and reviews may be…
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Kerkhove, Ray: Aboriginal guerilla tactics Southern Queensland 1843-55
Kerkhove, Ray ‘A different mode of war? Aboriginal “guerilla tactics” in defining the “Black War” of Southern Queensland 1843-1855: a paper presented July 2014 AHA Conference, University of Queensland, Brisbane’, Honest History, 3 February 2015 Frontier violence and Indigenous resistance…
Hynd, Doug: Religion and the sacred after Martin Place
Hynd, Doug ‘“Religion” and “the sacred”: a note for historians following the Martin Place siege‘, Honest History, 18 January 2015 The author briefly traces the connections between religion and violence and between the secular and the sacred. He includes some…
Religion and the sacred after Martin Place
Doug Hynd ‘“Religion” and “the sacred”: a note for historians following the Martin Place siege’, Honest History, 18 January 2015 In a recent column in the Fairfax press, Crispin Hull made some comments on religion and violence in the light…
Ford, Caroline: Sydney beaches
Ford, Caroline Sydney Beaches: A History, NewSouth, Sydney, 2014 The book looks at the way Sydney’s beaches came to be as they are: how they came to be public land treasured by bathers and surfers, but not places to set…
Jakubowicz, Andrew: Nine race riots that made Australia
Jakubowicz, Andrew ‘The nine race riots that made Australia – for better and worse‘, The Conversation, 9 January 2015 Spin-off from Peter FitzSimons’s television program, The Great Australian Race Riot, on SBS-TV. The author, a consultant to the program, suggests…
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Lord, John: Politics and Christian faith
Lord, John ‘Politics and the future of the Christian faith in Australia‘, Australian Independent Media Network, 8 December 2014 Tracks trends in religious faith and church attendance, using census and polling data. He quotes Tom Frame in his book, Losing…
Fox, Karen: Australian Dictionary of Biography
Fox, Karen ‘The art and graft of the Australian Dictionary of Biography‘, The Conversation, 5 December 2014 The ADB has been publishing short biographies since 1966 and has been online since 2008. The ADB has been hailed as one of…
Abjorensen, Norman: Tiger by the tail
Abjorensen, Norman ‘Tiger by the tail‘, Inside Story, 18 November 2014 Examines the changing social base of the modern Liberal Party, focusing particularly on the increasing influence of the Radical Right. It was the mid 1990s. Howard and his colleagues…
Daley, Paul: My Brother Jack 50 years on
Daley, Paul ‘My Brother Jack at 50 – the novel of a man whose whole life led up to it‘, Guardian Australia, 23 December 2014 Covers the novel (first published 1964), the author, George Johnston (died of alcohol and TB…
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Keneally, Thomas: Australians: Flappers to Vietnam
Keneally, Thomas Australians: Flappers to Vietnam, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2014 This is the third volume in the novelist-historian’s take on Australia. Volume 1; volume 2. It looks at behavioural change, consumerism and nascent left and right wing…
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Keneally’s Australians Volume 3 reviewed
‘Australians: Flappers to Vietnam reviewed’, Honest History, 18 December 2014 David Stephens reviews Thomas Keneally’s Australians: Flappers to Vietnam, the third volume in the author’s history of Australia. See Volume 1 and Volume 2. This is a fascinating but flawed…
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Horn, Jonathan: Let’s not equate players with Anzacs
Horn, Jonathan ‘Sport is brutal – but let’s not equate players with Anzacs‘, Guardian Australia, 10 September 2014 Describes how sports team ‘channel’ the Australian Digger, quoting Mick Malthouse, Steve Waugh, Alan Bond and Michael Clarke – and Ben Roberts-Smith…
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Davidson, Jim: Sport with guns
Davidson, Jim ‘Sport with guns‘, Meanjin, 67, 4, Summer 2008, pp.10-13 Suggests that Australia’s ‘celebration of the military’ has addled our consciousness, in the way that, according to Patrick White, sport had done. ‘The two things are connected. Under John…
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NAIDOC Week 2014: Trojan Horse or diversion?
This post replaces an earlier collection of material related to NAIDOC. The original post was unable to be updated for technical reasons, so we have created a new section (with a new title) where we intend to place related material…
Cogan, James: Death of Phillip Hughes
Cogan, James ‘The death of Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes‘, World Socialist Web Site, 2 December 2014 and updated Thoughtful analysis of the national (and international) mourning said to be following the death of Hughes. Concedes his youth, likeability and talent…
Summers, Anne: Politics of gender
Summers, Anne ‘More in anger: the politics of gender in Australia in 2013 (Second Emily’s List Oration, Canberra, 19 June 2013)‘ Looks at the representation of women in federal politics, says more should be done and proposes reserving 50 per…
Hawkings, Rebecca: Keating’s Creative Nation
Hawkings, Rebecca ‘Keating’s Creative Nation: a policy document that changed us‘, The Conversation, 30 October 2014 Article marking the 20th anniversary of Creative Nation, which injected $252 million of new spending into the arts and culture and had a profound…
Blackwood, Gemma: Resurrection of Australiana
Blackwood, Gemma ‘Pass the iced vo-vos: the resurrection of Australiana‘, The Conversation, 26 November 2014 The author notes an emerging trend in Australian popular cultural forms, involving a reinvigorated interest in Australiana – material visual culture that is visually themed…
Morrison, David: White Ribbon Day address, 2014
Morrison, David Chief of Army address to the White Ribbon Breakfast, Adelaide, 25 November 2014 This is the most well-developed version of General Morrison’s views on the link between misogyny in the Australian Army and macho, Anzac-linked attitudes in male…
Watson, Don: The Bush
Watson, Don The Bush: Travels in the Heart of Australia, Penguin, Melbourne, 2014; e-book available Most Australians live in cities and cling to the coastal fringe, yet our sense of what an Australian is – or should be – is…
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Tan, Monica: National architecture awards
Monica Tan ‘Australia’s national architecture awards 2014 – in pictures‘, Guardian Australia, 7 November 2014 The Australian Institute of Architects has named the winners of the country’s top architectural awards. The biggest winner is Brisbane’s UQ Advanced Engineering Building by…
Schultz, Julianne, et al: What is Australia For?
Schultz, Julianne, et al ‘What is Australia For?‘ Griffith Review 36, Autumn 2012 An extensive collection tries to answer the question posed in the title. Julianne Schultz’s introduction, ‘A question with many answers‘, suggests that ‘[t]he emerging Asian century’ provides…
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Women missing from the story
The fact that none of these [Ballarat 1854] women’s names is as familiar to us as that of Peter Lalor points to the inherent gender bias of Australian nationalism. In fact, men and women from many lands stood together beneath…
Novel politics
Federation and everything it encompassed, like workers’ rights, the welfare safety net and suffrage, and not the criminal Gallipoli landings, constituted the birth of Australian nationhood. Yeah, I’ve always had a thing about 1 January 1901 and why the Founding…
Highlights reel: ACOSS Poverty Report 2014
‘Highlights reel: ACOSS Poverty Report 2014’, Honest History, 30 October 2014 We are told that one of the most notable aspects of recent Australian history has been unbroken economic prosperity. We are told about more than two decades of growth,…
Schultz, Julianne et al.: Travelling a small world
Schultz, Julianne, et al. ‘Small world‘, Griffith Review 37, Spring 2012 A selection of articles exploring Australians as travellers. In ‘Footloose, fancy-free’, Schultz notes that ‘Australians are travelling more than ever, but whether this has fostered a sense of well…
Melleuish, Gregory: Restoring federalism
Melleuish, Gregory ‘To restore federalism, strengthen the states and make Australia more republican‘, The Conversation, 18 September 2014 Only by providing states with the capacity to raise the taxes they need to finance their operations can we restore them to…
Team Australia?
Those who have attacked the old Australian character and the very notion of a national character argue that a diverse nation has no need to discover or define or celebrate a distinctive character; it should be committed solely to the…
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Beaumont, Joan, et al.: ANU Archives annual lectures
Beaumont, Joan, et al. ANU Archives Annual Lectures The ANU Archives and the Friends of the Noel Butlin Archives Centre sponsor an annual lecture in Canberra and podcasts or vodcasts of recent ones are available. They include: 2014 Professor Joan Beaumont,…
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Australian Quarterly: 85 years in 85 days
Australian Quarterly 85 Years in 85 Days – AQ Celebrates Australian Quarterly, which claims to be Australia’s oldest current affairs magazine, temporarily lowered its paywall early in 2014 to give free access to articles published from 1929 to 1989 (which…
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Manley, Ken R. & Barbara J. Coe: Grace of goodness
Manley, Ken R. & Barbara J. Coe The Grace of Goodness: John Saunders – Baptist Pastor and Activist, Sydney 1834-1848, Greenwood Press in association with Baptist Historical Society of NSW, Macquarie Park, NSW, 2014 Rev John Saunders (1806-59) was the…
The Grace of Goodness (Rev John Saunders) reviewed
‘The grace of goodness in early Sydney’, Honest History, 7 October 2014 Doug Hynd* reviews Ken R. Manley & Barbara J. Coe, The Grace of Goodness: John Saunders – Baptist Pastor and Activist, Sydney 1834-1848, Greenwood Press in association with…
ABC RN Saturday Extra: Arthur Phillip and the Eora
ABC Radio National ‘Arthur Phillip and the Eora‘, Saturday Extra, 13 September 2014 Geraldine Doogue interviews Grace Karskens (audio only, no transcript) on relations between Captain Arthur Phillip and Bennelong of the Eora Nation. Notes that the precise nature of…
Saunders, Cheryl: Making federalism work
Saunders, Cheryl ‘Federalism is a natural fit for Australia, but we need to make it work‘, The Conversation, 24 September 2014 The author concludes that ‘abandonment of federalism is not desirable … It is impossible to imagine democracy without federalism…
Advice to Western Australians
Perhaps you will be content with a moderate and humdrum success, but I hope not. I hope that the more adventurous and enterprising spirits among you will be inspired by a golden vision of a possible future, and will be…
Defining moment
The arrival of the first fleet was the defining moment in the history of this continent. Let me repeat that: it was the defining moment in the history of this continent. It was the moment this continent became part of…
Cultural heritage
Middle-class Australia’s shallow, derivative culture has in part been a consequence of the willful and continuing denial of its debt to the Aborigines, and its refusal to think about the nightmare on which the Australian dream has depended. (Judith Brett,…
ABC RN Bush Telegraph: Stitching the Eureka flag
ABC Radio National ‘The brave women who stitched Australia’s flag of unity and rebellion‘, Bush Telegraph, 10 September 2014 Podcast (23 minutes) discussion between Clare Wright, Val D’Angri, descendant, and Jane Smith, curator, about the history of the Eureka flag,…
ABC Radio National Media Report: News in colonial Sydney
ABC Radio National ‘News dissemination in colonial Sydney‘, Media Report, 28 August 2014 Podcast (eight minutes) in which Richard Aedy and Grace Karskens discuss dissemination by word of mouth, government notices stuck on trees, ships from Britain, communication between Indigenous…
Dowse, Sara: What are feminists to do?
Dowse, Sara ‘So what are feminists to do?‘ Inside Story, 14 August 2014 Text of 2014 Emily’s List Oration. The author was head of the federal government’s Office for the Status of Women in the 1970s. The 1970s could be…
SBS News: Where immigrants were born: map
SBS News Where Australia’s Immigrants were Born Interactive maps, based on the 2011 census, for all capital cities and for the nation via local government areas, showing top three countries of birth for immigrants to Australia. Browsing and clicking is…
Schultz, Julianne et al.: Looking to New Zealand
Schultz, Julianne ‘Looking east’, Griffith Review, 43, January 2014 The author, born in New Zealand but now based in Australia, introduces an edition of Griffith Review devoted to New Zealand and titled ‘Pacific highways‘. The dream of a united Australasia…
Pybus, Cassandra: China and Tasmania
Pybus, Cassandra ‘China in the Tasmanian imaginary‘, Griffith Review, 39, January 2013 Towards the end of the 19th century, a vibrant Chinese community existed in northeastern Tasmania based on tin mining. The now tiny hamlet of Weldborough was the centre…
Tilley, Cristen: Violence against women surveyed
Tilley, Cristen ‘10 charts that reveal Australian attitudes to violence against women‘, ABC News, 18 September 2014 Charts changes since 1995 in VicHealth’s poll of 17 500 people on the community’s knowledge, attitudes and responses to physical and other forms of violence,…
Clark, Ian D. et al, ed.: Indigenous and minority place names
Clark, Ian D, Luise Hercus & Laura Kostanski, ed., Indigenous and Minority Place Names: Australian and International Perspectives, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 2014; print and downloadable editions, including print on demand This book showcases current research into Indigenous and…
Paul, Erik: Violence in Australia
Paul, Erik ‘The political economy of violence in Australia‘, Journal of Political Economy, 63, Winter 2009, pp. 82-101 Considers the economic, cultural and political aspects of violence, in particular, its connections with the nature of capitalism. Specific issues addressed include…
Allam, Lorena, et al: 1973 Human Relationships Royal Commission
Allam, Lorena, et al ‘Public intimacies: The Royal Commission on Human Relationships‘, ABC Radio National, 28 April 2013 ABC program (audio only) discussing the work of a ground-breaking 1970s inquiry, presented by Lorena Allam, produced by Professor Michelle Arrow and…
Humphrys, Elizabeth: Birth of Australia
Humphrys, Elizabeth ‘The birth of Australia: non-capitalist social relations in a capitalist mode of production?‘ Journal of Political Economy, 70, Summer 2012-13, pp. 110-17 This article argues that, despite the early Australian colonies encompassing the extensive use of unfree convict…
Goldsworthy, Anna: Voices of the land
Goldsworthy, Anna ‘Voices of the land‘, The Monthly, September 2014 updated Update 18 November 2016: Jane Simpson on some practical issues with teaching Indigenous language. Links to other material also. About the efforts of University of Adelaide, Israel-born linguist, Professor…
Clements, Nicholas: Black War in Tasmania
Clements, Nicholas The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2014 Between 1825 and 1831 close to 200 Britons and 1000 Aborigines died violently in Tasmania’s Black War. It was by far the…
BBC on Anzac centenary in Australia
BBC World Service journalist Judith Crosbie reports on Anzac centenary commemoration in Australia. The first part of the ten minute audio is another BBC journalist talking about our attitudes to asylum seekers. The tone of both segments is one of…
Daley, Paul: Renouncing Australia
Daley, Paul ‘The man who renounced Australia,’ Guardian Australia, 26 August 2014 The story of Murrumu Walubara Yidindji, formerly Jeremy Geia, who has ‘left’ Australia, while remaining within it, and who believes Yidindji laws, as the laws of the original…
Lord, John: Comics in Australia
Lord, John ‘The history of comics in Australia‘, Australian Independent Media Network, 29 August 2014 Brief article covering early comic strips in The Bulletin and elsewhere, imported comics and the first Australian produced comic in 1931. They provided artists like…
Stevenson, Chrys: Politics of Australian religion
Stevenson, Chrys ‘The politics of Australian religion‘, The King’s Tribune, 25 August 2014 Examines the reasons for the bipartisan support gathered by the school chaplaincy program, despite the constitutional difficulties it has faced and doubts about its efficacy and ethics.…
Starck, Nigel: Trollope and colonials
Starck, Nigel ‘Celebrity blows: Anthony Trollope and those touchy colonials‘, The Conversation, 1 September 2014 Describes the visits to Australia of Trollope, novelist and said to be our first celebrity blow-in. He ‘found Australian pride could be easily hurt’ but we…
McQueen, Humphrey: Review Other Side of Frontier
McQueen, Humphrey ‘Part III: Review of Reynolds The Other Side of the Frontier (1981)’, Honest History, 2 September 2014 Henry Reynolds’s The Other Side of the Frontier: An Interpretation of the Aboriginal Response to the Invasion and Settlement of Australia,…
McQueen, Humphrey: Preface to The Black Resistance
McQueen, Humphrey ‘Part II: Preface to The Black Resistance (1977)’, Honest History, 2 September 2014 The publication of the lecture in Part I stimulated a group of students to widen and deepen the sketch in the lecture. This became Fergus…
McQueen, Humphrey: Defending Australia from the Pink Peril
McQueen, Humphrey ‘Part I: Defending Australia from the Pink Peril (1973)’, Honest History, 2 September 2014 From a lecture given in Australian History III, Australian National University, July 1973. It was later printed in Woroni (ANU) 16 July 1973, then…
McQueen, Humphrey: Pioneering writing on Frontier Wars
McQueen, Humphrey ‘The real battle for Australia: pioneering writing on the Frontier Wars (Parts I-III)’, Honest History, 2 September 2014 Introduction by David Stephens With the co-operation of the author, we have collected here three pieces of writing by historian…
Honest History list: inequality by the dozen
You can now find our inequality resources linked from here. 14 November 2015
Black Diggers and Frontier Wars
Honest History has a number of resources on these related issues. This article provoked by NAIDOC Week 2014 includes links to a number of articles discussing both the Frontier Wars and the rediscovered role of Indigenous servicemen. Peter Stanley gave…
Smith, Evan: Fascist view of Australia 1937
Smith, Evan ‘A fascist view of Australia (1937)‘, Hatful of History, 11 August 2014 Quotes at length from an article in Action by the British Fascist, A. Raven Thomson, who was the chief theoretician of the British Union of Fascists…
Foley, Gary & Elizabeth Muldoon: Indigenous curriculum
Foley, Gary & Elizabeth Muldoon ‘Pyning for Indigenous rights in the Australian curriculum‘, The Conversation, 15 August 2014 Argues that Indigenous history is under-represented or misrepresented in the current national history curriculum for secondary students. In particular, there is inadequate…
Masanauskas, John: Melbourne pictures
Masanauskas, John ‘Haunting images of the streets that were once home to Melbourne’s slums‘, Herald-Sun, 11 August 2014 Photo essay of slum streets 1936-83. The piece links to similar essays on other aspects of Melbourne life, including series for each…
Claven, Jim: Greek Anzac
Claven, Jim ‘From Asia Minor to Anzac Cove: the Odyssey of Peter Rados‘, Neos Kosmos, 11 August 2014 Story of an Anzac born in Ottoman Asia Minor, a member of Sydney’s Greek community. Landed at Gallipoli, 25 April 1915; killed…
Camping made us
[S]ome of our most widely held values, especially egalitarianism, tolerance and the premium we place on practicability, have been nurtured by the experience of camping. Bill Garner, author of Born in a Tent: How Camping Makes Us Australian, 2013.
Mark Twain Down Under
‘Australian history’, according to Mark Twain, lecturing in Australia in 1895 to raise some much needed cash, is almost always picturesque; indeed, it is so curious and strange, that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer,…
Coining our history
Australian anthropologist Ian McIntosh at Indiana University is trying to work out whether five coins found in the Northern Territory during World War II are evidence that sailors from Africa reached Australia up to 900 years ago. The coins originated…
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The land speaks
To understand our history, you need to understand the land. Individuals, cultures, persistent ideologies (substantiated or not) and the innate nature of humanity are major forces too. But the land itself is underestimated. Jackie French, Let the Land Speak: A…
Our martial tradition
Conflict, it seems, is part of the human condition, and we must always be ready for it… This exhibition … shows the continuity of our martial tradition and of our national character. Tony Abbott, as Opposition Leader, speaking at the…
Brutality at Swan River, 1837
It is a truth which is painful to relate, that in the 19th Century Englishmen and protestants, shall be so cruel and hunt after the aborigines like after a game, the innocent child is not spared; they are shot in…
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Dressing – 1880s Melbourne
An English observer, Richard Twopeny, writes about female dress in 1880s Melbourne: I fancy that the French modistes manufacture a certain style of attire for the Australian market. It is a compound of the cocotte and the American. Nor when…
Primordial state
The early circumstances of New South Wales were against its rapid growth. Founded as a receptacle for convicts, a system akin to slavery soon took root. Such of the early settlers as were neither gentlemen nor convicts belonged to the…
Subversive suburbs
‘So – to sum up – you don’t have to be a mindless conformist to choose suburban life. Most of the best poets and painters and inventors and protesters choose it too.’ (Hugh Stretton, Ideas for Australian Cities (1970))
A Gippsland massacre
They drove the abos in to a bend beside Warragal [sic] Creek homestead and killed all that were there. Then they loaded the bodies into bullock drays and took them up into the sandhills about half a mile away and…
Anzac spirit in Bali?
The release of Schapelle Corby led Paola Totaro in The Guardian Australia to reprise public attitudes to Corby’s case. She noted one journalist’s view from 2005 that Australians ‘seemed to “fancy they see something of the Gallipoli spirit in Corby”,…
Have we forgotten?
There is no doubt that during the latter half of last century [that is, the nineteenth century] the Australian people were acutely aware of their isolation, and were determined to turn to account the freedom it gave them by building…
Many Australias
Australians have always been over-concerned about what the BBC thinks about us but this BBC man may be onto something. ‘A common failing of these kinds of columns [about national identity, often around Australia Day] is that they insist on defining a singular…
Toning it down
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Richardson, David & Denniss, Richard: Income and wealth inequality
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Patrick, Rhianna: Indigenous authors explore new genres
Patrick, Rhianna ‘Indigenous authors explore Twitter fiction and new literary genres,’ AWAYE! ABC Radio National, 27 June 2014 Audio and text about the changes in Indigenous literature in the last 30 years, from life story and memoir in the 1980s…
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Highlights reel: HB Higgins on political differences
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Bottoms, Timothy: Myall Creek and beyond
Bottoms, Timothy ‘Myall Creek Memorial Talk, Sunday 8 June 2014’, Honest History, 23 June 2014, updated This item is relevant to the history of relations between Indigenous and White Australians but also to the way we have suppressed and distorted…
General Morrison speaks against sexual violence in war
Chief of Army LT GEN David Morrison was a featured speaker at the Global Summit to end Sexual Violence in Conflict. He noted that at the heart of the issue of sexual violence committed by men in uniform ‘stands the…
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Douglas, Bob et al: Inequality in Australia
Douglas, Bob, Sharon Friel, Richard Denniss & David Morawetz Advance Australia Fair? What to do about Growing Inequality in Australia: Report following a Roundtable held at Parliament House Canberra in January 2014, Australia21 in collaboration with The Australia Institute, Canberra,…
Peacebus: Frontier Wars 2014
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Sharp, Nonie: Nugget Coombs and Judith Wright
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Routley, Nicholas: Mahabharata
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Review note: more Anzac miscellany 2014
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Rickard, John: Sentimental blokes
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Wetherell, Rodney: Subtopia or sunnyside?
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Sharp, Nonie: Three lost children
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Broinowski, Alison: Fascism and Fraser
Broinowski, Alison ‘Silent conspirators: Fascism and Fraser’, Honest History, 22 May 2014 and updated All fascist regimes and organisations have used the power of nationalism and national security as a motivator, as Australia has increasingly done. But no other country…
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O’Lincoln, Tom: Neighbour from Hell: Two Centuries of Australian Imperialism
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Australia as Imperialist ‘Neighbour from Hell’
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Scanlon Foundation: social cohesion in Australia
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By appointment: a right royal Jauncey (22 May 2014)
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Diamadis, Panayiotis: Gallipoli before and beyond Anzac
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Review note: Anzac miscellany 2014
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Australian National Film Board: Postcards from Perth
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Cannon, Paul: Fascism characteristics and Australia
Cannon, Paul ‘The characteristics of Fascism and how we might note its presence today‘, Parallax (blog), 27 January 2014 Update 2015: there is a speech here, another 1937 snapshot here and a discussion here. Compares the defining characteristics of…
Whiteford, Peter: Income and wealth inequality
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Phillips, Janet: Asylum seekers facts
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Laugesen, Amanda: Convict words
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Leigh, Andrew: Battlers and billionaires
Leigh, Andrew Battlers and Billionaires: the Story of Inequality in Australia, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2013 From egalitarian beginnings, Australian inequality rose through the nineteenth century. Then we became more equal again, with inequality falling markedly from the 1920s to the…
Campbell, Craig & Helen Proctor: Australian schooling
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Ross, Liz: The Left and gay liberation
Ross, Liz Revolution is For Us: The Left and Gay Liberation in Australia, Interventions, Brunswick, Vic., 2013 It was the Left which championed revolution, which had a theory and practice of revolution – Marxism. But when it comes to Gay…
Daley, Paul: Indigenous remains
Daley, Paul ‘Restless indigenous remains‘, Meanjin, 73, 1, March 2014 The author explores the storage facilities of the National Museum of Australia and writes about the implications for the way we treat the dead from our wars, overseas and at…
Smith, Peter: Stop the boats
Smith, Peter ‘Stop the boats. Infuriate the ABC‘, Quadrant Online, 13 January 2014 There is some legitimate room for debate about the extent and character of controlled immigration. People and politicians can have different views. But there should be no…
Tuckfield, Hugh: Asylum seeker policy
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Ackland, Richard: White Australia
Ackland, Richard ‘Welcome back to White Australia‘, Sydney Morning Herald, 28 February 2014 Places 2014 in a historical context and looks at possible policy alternatives for dealing with asylum seeker arrivals. There were more than 800 comments on the article.…
Hynd, Doug: Moral judgements, asylum seekers, historians
Hynd, Doug ‘Moral judgments, asylum seekers and why historians can be helpful in public policy-making’, Honest History, 12 March 2014 Taking a historical perspective can give depth and clarity to controversial policy issues. The current debate about who is morally…
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Leigh, Andrew: Eureka Lecture 2013
Leigh, Andrew ‘“A victory won by a lost battle”: What Eureka means to Australians today: Eureka Lecture, Ballarat, Tuesday, 3 December 2013‘, Andrew Leigh Blog, 3 December 2013 Was Eureka a youth movement of an 1850s clash of generations? A revolt…
Butler, Ed: Manly men v wimps
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Green, Michael: Once were warriors
Green, Michael ‘Once were warriors‘, The Age, 5 February 2014 Looks at moves in Melbourne to commemorate two Indigenous warriors, hung in 1842 for killing two white men. The City Council has agreed to a memorial but needs to decide…
Tatz, Simon: Nationalism wedge
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Museum Victoria: Immigration Museum
Museum Victoria Immigration Museum Portal to the resources held by the Museum containing ‘[m]oving stories of people from all over the world who have migrated to Australia’. Educational material, project suggestions and links to other sites.
Rudd, Kevin: Apology to Stolen Generations
Rudd, Kevin Apology to Australia’s Indigenous Peoples, House of Representatives, Parliament House, Canberra, 13 February 2008 I move: That today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history. We reflect on their past…
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Keating, PJ: Redfern speech
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Garbutt, Rob: Social inclusion
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Wadham, Ben: Militarisation and hate
Wadham, Ben ‘Yumi and Ben: the militarisation of Australia and the democratisation of hate‘, The Conversation, 6 March 2012 Analyses the sexist and racist reaction to the insulting remarks made by a television personality about a Victoria Cross winner. The…
Falzon, John: Colonisation
Falzon, John ‘The history of colonisation: “In the Absence of Treaty” book launch, Australian National University, 6th February 2014‘ Speech by CEO of St Vincent de Paul Society National Council launching a book on the Northern Territory intervention. There are…
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Maley, Jacqueline: Debate about Australia Day
Maley, Jacqueline ‘Needless debate masks true meaning of Australia Day‘, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 January 2014 On Australia Day, we should, by all means, celebrate our good fortune, the hiccup of fate that means we get to live in Australia…
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Grant, Corinne: Straya stayin dumb
Grant, Corinne ‘I’m strayan and I love stayin’ dumb‘, The Hoopla, 23 January 2014 Stand-up comic and writer critical at Australia Day of Australians’ alleged liking for trivia: ‘We want short slogans, simple solutions and lots and lots of drama’.…
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Jauncey on the days (and years) of our lives (20 January 2014)
Happy New Year; 2014. Has anyone else noticed the significance of this year? Yes, of course, it is the centenary of the start of World War I and we won’t be allowed to forget that as the commemorative bandwagon rolls…
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Daley, Paul: Black diggers
Daley, Paul ‘Black diggers: challenging Anzac myths‘, Guardian Australia, 14 January 2014 Looks at the stories of black servicemen during World War I, in the context of a new play ‘Black Diggers’. About 400 Indigenous Australians joined up. Notes that…
Daley, Paul: Anzac, the Australian flag, and Cronulla race riots
On the anniversary of the Cronulla riots between flag-draped anglo-australian and Lebanese youths, Paul Daley writes in the The Guardian online questioning the appropriation of the Australian flag and the Southern Cross motif, as well as the politicisation of race divisions…
Scott, Rosie & Tom Keneally, ed.: Country too far
Scott, Rosie & Tom Keneally, ed. A Country Too Far: Writings on Asylum Seekers, Viking, Melbourne, 2013 Short stories, book extracts, poems and essays on aspects of Australia’s current attitudes to asylum seekers, in some contributions set against the historical…
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Daley, Paul: Frontier war
Daley, Paul ‘Why does the Australian War Memorial ignore the frontier war?‘ The Guardian Australia, 12 September 2013 Bordered with militarily precise shrubs including the herb of remembrance, rosemary, the outer walls are adorned with a series of elaborately carved…
Rawsthorne, Sally: Why does the world think Australia is racist?
Rawsthorne, Sally ‘Why does the world think Australia is racist?‘ The Guardian Australia, 25 October 2013 Canvasses evidence in Australia and internationally about alleged Australian attitudes, with links to sources and comment from over 800 people. Contrasts the acceptance of…
Piggott, Michael: Battle for Australia
Piggott, Michael ‘The Battle for Australia: Henry Reynolds’s “Forgotten War”’, Honest History e-Newsletter no. 5, September 2013 Michael Piggott reviews the most recent of Henry Reynolds’s series of books on the ‘frontier wars’ between Indigenous Australians and white settlers. The…
Ryan, Lyndall: Tasmanian Aborigines
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Neumann, Klaus & Gwenda Tavan, ed.: Does history matter?
Neumann, Klaus & Gwenda Tavan, ed. Does History Matter? Making and Debating Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Policy in Australia and New Zealand, ANU E-Press & Australian and New Zealand School of Government, Canberra, 2009; free download format available Multiple authors…
Jones, Barry: Asylum a moral challenge
Jones, Barry ‘Asylum is the greatest moral challenge of our time‘, The Conversation, 29 July 2013 The fact that non-European migration has been so significant since the end of White Australia ought to make us sympathetic to refugees, but I…
Stanley, Peter: Black Saturday
Stanley, Peter Black Saturday at Steels Creek, Scribe, Brunswick, Vic., 2013 In-depth study of the impact, at the time and after, of the 2009 fires on a small community near Melbourne. Interesting for comparisons with the author’s previous work in…
Markus, Andrew: Mapping social cohesion
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Whitlam Institute multiple authors: Whitlam Institute
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Stone, Caitlin & Jim Berryman: Menzies collection
Stone, Caitlin & Jim Berryman ‘The Robert Menzies Collection: A Living Library‘, e-Scholarship Research Centre, University of Melbourne, 2013 Comprehensive collection of resources associated with Menzies, classified A-Z under the headings of books, colleagues, friends and family, interests, events, organisations,…
White, Richard: Inventing Australia
White, Richard Inventing Australia: Images and Identity, 1688-1980, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 1981 Pioneering work in Australian cultural history, roughly chronological but also thematic. “To be Australian”: what can that mean? Inventing Australia sets out to find the…
White, Richard et al: On holidays
White, Richard with Sarah-Jane Ballard, Ingrid Bown, Meredith Lake, Patricia Leehy and Lila Oldmeadow On Holidays: A History of Getting Away in Australia, Pluto Press, North Melbourne, Vic., 2005 Describes chronologically from 1768 ‘the Australian experience of going on holidays…
Masters, Chris: Years that made us
Masters, Chris The Years That Made Us, ABC Video, 2013 (shown on ABC TV, June-July 2013) In Australian mythology nationhood was forged in the slaughter of Gallipoli in 1915. But in The Years That Made Us Chris Masters introduces a…
McKenna, Mark: Reconciled republic?
McKenna, Mark This Country: A Reconciled Republic? UNSW Press, Sydney, 2004 The author considers together what he sees as two key and related issues, reconciliation with Indigenous Australians and the republic. Reconciliation and the republic are not separate issues, they…
Wright, Clare: Forgotten rebels of Eureka
Wright, Clare The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2013 Tells the stories of the thousands of women on the Ballarat goldfields, the crucial role they played in the Eureka rebellion and the links between what they did and…
Beggs-Sunter, Anne: Eureka
Beggs-Sunter, Anne ‘Eureka: gathering “the oppressed of all nations”‘, Journal of Australian Cultural History, 10, 1, 2008 Over the last one hundred and fifty years, the meaning of the Eureka Stockade has been characterised in different ways. To some it…
McMullin, Ross: So monstrous a travesty
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La Nauze, JA: Deakin
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Darian-Smith, Kate, Patricia Grimshaw & Stuart Macintyre, ed.: Britishness
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Walker, David: Anxious nation
Walker, David Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise and Fall of Asia 1850-1939, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld, 1999 From the late nineteenth century the Asianisation of Australia has sparked anxious comment. The great catchcries of the day…
Australian National University: Noel Butlin Archives
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Ward, Russel: Australian Legend
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Evans, MDR & Jonathan Kelley: Australian economy and society
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Austin, AG: Australian education
Austin, AG Australian Education, 1788-1900: Church, State, and Public Education in Colonial Australia, Pitman, Carlton, Vic., 1961; online version available Pioneering study of early education in Australia. Does not mention Aboriginal education. See also this on the Education Acts of…
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John Smyth ‘Speaking back to educational policy: why social inclusion will not work for disadvantaged Australian schools‘, Critical Studies in Education, 51, 2, 2010, pp. 113-28 The Labor government in Australia has recently embarked on an extremely ambitious program of…
te Riele, Kitty: Raising educational attainment
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Wheelahan, Leesa: Educational pathways
Wheelahan, Leesa ‘Do educational pathways contribute to equity in tertiary education in Australia?‘ Critical Studies in Education, 50, 3, 2009, pp. 261-75 A key assumption of equity policies in Australia, as in many countries, is that pathways from lower-status, vocationally…
Gale, Trevor & Deborah Tranter: Social justice in higher education
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Henry, Nicola & Karolina Kurzak: Religion in Australia
Henry, Nicola & Karolina Kurzak with Charles Sherlock ‘Religion in Australia‘, The Australian Collaboration: A Collaboration of National Community Organisations (October 2012) Factsheet on religious affiliations (including Australian Bureau of Statistics figures summarised), interfaith developments and the place of religion…
Jupp, James, et al, ed.: Social cohesion
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Waterhouse, Richard: Private pleasures
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About People like us
Click here for all items related to: People like us How do we recognise what makes a person Australian? Some people have believed that Anzac gave us distinctive national qualities; these are looked at in the website section Anzac analysed.…
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Warhurst, John: Religion in politics
Warhurst, John ‘Religion in 21st century Australian national politics’, Australia. Senate: Papers on Parliament, 46, December 2006 The religious factor generally means a number of things in politics. One is the political activity of the organised face of religion, the…
Garner, Bill: Born in a tent
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Davison, Graeme: Car wars
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Lack, John & Jacqueline Templeton, ed.: Australian immigration
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Dyrenfurth, Nick, Mark Hearn & Harry Knowles, ed.: Fisher
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Lake, Marilyn: This great America
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Maddison, Sarah & Marian Sawer, ed.: Women’s movement
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Martinez, Julia T.: Questioning White Australia
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Murphy, Gabrielle: Reconsidering immigration reform
Murphy, Gabrielle ‘Reconsidering immigration reform – again‘, The Age, 8 August 2013 Revisits the pioneering lobbying of 1960 which helped end the White Australia policy. The original Control or Colour Bar? pamphlet is here. One of the members of the original…
Jordens, Ann-Mari: Hope
Jordens, Ann-Mari Hope: Refugees and Their Supporters in Australia since 1947, Halstead Press, Sydney, 2012 In-depth consideration of the resettlement experiences of refugees. The author notes that the outsourcing of resettlement services to specialist providers ‘conveys the impression that the…
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Tavan, Gwenda: Long, slow death
Tavan, Gwenda The Long, Slow Death of White Australia, Scribe, Carlton North, Vic., 2005 The history of the racist immigration policy that was Australia’s guiding light for the majority of the 20th century is examined in this work. Beginning with…
Broome, Richard: Aboriginal Australians
Richard Broome Aboriginal Australians: A History since 1788, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 4th edition, 2010; first published 1982; 3rd edition 2002 had sub-title Black Responses to White Dominance Richard Broome tells the history of Australia from the standpoint…
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Jupp, James: White Australia to Woomera
Jupp, James From White Australia to Woomera: The Story of Australian Immigration, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2nd edition, 2007; first published 2002 [S]urveys the changes in policy over the last thirty years since the seismic shift away from the…
Lake, Marilyn & Henry Reynolds: Global Colour Line
Lake, Marilyn & Henry Reynolds Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2008; e-book and print on demand available Places Australia’s late 19th and early 20th century…
Lake, Marilyn: Getting equal
Lake, Marilyn Getting Equal: The History of Australian Feminism, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1999 Getting Equal is the first full-length history of the movements – and their feisty, ebullient, determined leaders – who fought for women’s political and economic rights,…
Kociumbas, Jan: Australian childhood
Kociumbas, Jan Australian Childhood: A History, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1997 ‘In Australian Childhood Jan Kociumbas explores the experience of growing up in Australia since white settlement. She acknowledges the resilience and adaptability of the young and re-evaluates…
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Flood, Josephine: Original Australians
Flood, Josephine The Original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal People, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2007 The Original Australians tells the story of Australian Aboriginal history and society from its distant beginnings to the present day. From the wisdom…
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Whiteford, Peter: Poverty
Whiteford, Peter ‘Poverty in a time of prosperity‘, Inside Story, 15 September 2013 Over the past forty years the economic fortunes of Australian households have fallen into two fairly distinct periods. In the “disappointing decades” of the 1970s and 1980s,…
Davidson, Alistair: Subject to citizen
Davidson, Alistair From Subject to Citizen: Australian Citizenship in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997 ‘The central theme is that making proofs of belonging to the national culture a precondition of citizenship is inappropriate for a multicultural society…
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Tsiolkas, Christos: Why Australia hates asylum seekers
Tsiolkas, Christos ‘Why Australia hates asylum seekers‘, The Monthly, September 2013 The article examines what the author describes as ‘a 15-year campaign that has bred fear, misconceptions and fury about asylum seekers’.
Altman, Dennis: End of the homosexual
Altman, Dennis The End of the Homosexual, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld, 2013 The book ‘connects what has happened within the changing queer world over the past forty years to larger social, political and cultural trends. This is…
Ashenden, Dean: Neglected wars
Ashenden, Dean ‘The Australian wars that Anzac Day neglects‘, Eureka Street, 21 April 2013 Notes that the frontier wars are not recognised at the Australian War Memorial and other memorials and argues that ‘public and popular history should record the…
Manne, Robert: Sorry
Manne, Robert ‘Sorry business: the road to the apology‘, The Monthly, March 2008 Examines the history leading to the Rudd Government’s apology to the Stolen Generation in 2008, elements of the history of White Australia’s dealings with Indigenous Australians and…
Bongiorno, Frank: Sex
Bongiorno, Frank The Sex Lives of Australians, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2012 ‘Cross-dressing colonists, effeminate bushrangers and women-shortage woes – here is the first ever history of sex in Australia, from Botany Bay to the present-day. ‘ The book shows how…
Featherstone, Lisa: Sex
Featherstone, Lisa Let’s Talk about Sex: Histories of Sexuality in Australia from Federation to the Pill, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, 2011 Covering the period to 1961, the book ‘explores the ways sexuality has been constructed, understood and experienced in…
Lydon, Jane & Tracy Ireland, ed.: Object lessons
Lydon, Jane & Tracy Ireland, ed. Object Lessons: Archaeology and Heritage in Australia, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2005 This book examines how we define ourselves through our concern with the past, and especially the idiosyncratic ways we engage with the…
McKenna, Mark: Blackfellas’ point
McKenna, Mark Looking for Blackfellas’ Point: An Australian History of Place, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2002 ‘A history for every Australian who is interested in the story of settler-Australia’s relations with Indigenous people—what happened between us, how…
Mulvaney, John & Johan Kamminga: Prehistory
Mulvaney, John & Johan Kamminga Prehistory of Australia, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, revised edition, 1999; first published Thames and Hudson 1969 as The Prehistory of Australia; other editions Mulvaney has been Australia’s most distinguished prehistorian. ‘The obvious starting…
Sherratt, Tim, Tom Griffiths & Libby Robin, ed.: Change
Sherratt, Tim, Tom Griffiths & Libby Robin, ed. A Change in the Weather: Climate and Culture in Australia, NMA Press, Canberra, 2005 Collection of essays showing how climate and weather ‘can change lives, particularly in Australia, a continent of extreme,…
Blainey, Geoffrey: All horizons
Blainey, Geoffrey This Land is All Horizons: Australia’s Fears and Visions: Boyer Lectures, ABC Books, Sydney, 2001 This is a discussion of equality and equality of opportunity in Australian history, and of the changing way in which Australians see their…
Hughes, Robert: Fatal shore
Hughes, Robert The Fatal Shore, Vintage, New York, 1986; many later editions and electronic versions Tells the story of freemen (and women) and convicts and the Indigenous people to whose country they came. Covers the period 1787 to 1868. Many…
Summers, Anne: Damned whores and God’s police
Summers, Anne Damned Whores and God’s Police: The Colonization of Women in Australia, Penguin, Ringwood, Vic., 1975; later editions 1994, 2002 According to the author’s website, the book was in November 2003 voted one of the top ten books of…
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Rolls, Eric: Citizens
Rolls, Eric Citizens: Flowers and the Wide Sea: Continuing the Epic Story of China’s Centuries-Old Relationship with Australia, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld, 1998 Sequel to Sojourners, dealing with how the Chinese pursued their aim after 1888 ‘to…
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Rolls, Eric: Sojourners
Rolls, Eric Sojourners: The Epic Story of China’s Centuries-old Relationship with Australia: Flowers and the Wide Sea, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Qld, 1992 First volume in a detailed study of the relationship between the Chinese and Australia, taking…
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Hancock, Keith: Discovering Monaro
Hancock, Keith Discovering Monaro: A Study of Man’s Impact on his Environment, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1972; republished 2009 Discusses the Aboriginal occupation of the Monaro region near Canberra, tribal territories, the population before white settlement, economic life, the use…
Gammage, Bill: Biggest estate
Gammage, Bill The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2011 Bill Gammage’s The Biggest Estate on Earth argues that the Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific…
Hirst, John: Oddity from the start
Hirst, John ‘An oddity from the start: convicts and national character‘, The Monthly, July 2008 Argues against the idea that our convict heritage made us an anti-authoritarian people. Includes criticism of the Russel Ward thesis in his The Australian Legend…
Megalogenis, George: Trivial pursuit
Megalogenis, George ‘Trivial pursuit: leadership and the end of the reform era‘, Quarterly Essay, 40, November 2010 Laments the lack of political vision or interest in policy reform as the nation enters the period of the ‘hung Parliament’. A number…
Mitchell, Natasha, Bruce Scates & Damien Williams: Anzac memories
Mitchell, Natasha, Bruce Scates & Damien Williams ‘Anzac memories‘, ABC Life Matters, 25 April 2013 (audio; no transcript) Natasha Mitchell talks with Monash academics, Bruce Scates and Damien Williams, who describe their work on ‘100 stories‘ and ‘Anzac remembered‘. There…
Pearson, Noel: Keating biography launch
Pearson, Noel ‘An address to the Launch: Don Watson “Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM”, Random House Australia 2002 [Sydney, 1 May 2002]‘ Uses the launch of the Keating biography to criticise some aspects of…
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Watson, Don: Keating
Watson, Don Recollections of a Bleeding Heart: A Portrait of Paul Keating PM, Knopf, Milson’s Point, NSW, 2002; later editions A view of 13 years of Australian history from the perspective of a prime ministerial speech writer. It contains a…
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Stilwell, Frank & Kirrily Jordan: Who gets what?
Stilwell, Frank & Kirrily Jordan Who Gets What? Analysing Economic Inequality in Australia, Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne, Vic., 2007 Ranges widely over Australian history with an emphasis on the years since 1960. Why have the incomes of corporate executives…
Scarlett, Philippa: Indigenous histories
Scarlett, Philippa Indigenous Histories Website ‘[s]upporting Australian Indigenous history, art and culture’. Includes posts on Indigenous service men in both major wars from the Leane, Fell, Rigney, Punch, Stubbings and many other families. The site contains contact details for obtaining…
Lake, Marilyn: Unequal to the task
Lake, Marilyn ‘Unequal to the task‘, The Age, 22 March 2012 Notes that Australian egalitarian principles were strongly in evidence before World War I, as seen, for example, in the work of HB Higgins (see also here). It is timely…
Piggott, Michael: The Battle for Australia: Henry Reynolds’s ‘Forgotten War’
Michael Piggott* ‘The Battle for Australia: Henry Reynolds’s “Forgotten War”‘, Honest History Newsletter No. 5, September 2013 There is so much about Henry Reynolds’s latest book (Forgotten War, NewSouth Publishing, 2013) to admire, to think about and to endorse. What…
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Reynolds, Henry: Forgotten War
Henry Reynolds Forgotten War, New South, Sydney, 2013 The book (winner of the Victorian Premier’s award for non-fiction) chronicles in relentless detail the frontier war between settlers and Indigenous Australians, which saw upwards of 30 000 Aborigines and at least…
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Colmar Brunton: Phase II report
Colmar Brunton Department of Veterans’ Affairs: ‘A Century of Service’: Community Research Phase II: Report (August 2011) Report of focus group research on how Australia should commemorate the Anzac centenary. An issue raised in the report of the Anzac centenary…
Shanahan, Dennis: Migrants revived nation’s story
Dennis Shanahan ‘Migrants “revived nation’s story“‘, The Australian, 26 April 2012 Then Prime Minister Gillard, interviewed at Gallipoli, repeats the thoughts in her speech there that Gallipoli ‘marks the time when a fledgling nation got a real sense of itself’.…
Noone, Richard: Leaping to false idea on Anzacs
Richard Noone ‘Leaping to false idea on Anzacs‘, Daily Telegraph, 27 March 2012 Vox pop, including diverse comments from non-Anglo-Celtic Australians about the importance of Anzac Day. (The Colmar Brunton report suggested, among other things, that the Anzac Day centenary…
Morrison, David: UN speech on ADF sexism
David Morrison ‘United Nations International Women’s Day Conference: Address by the Chief of Army Lieutenant General David Morrison, AO at the United Nations International Women’s Day Conference, 8-9 March 2013‘ The speech contains some musing about the impact of the…
Summers, Anne: The Misogyny Factor
Anne Summers The Misogyny Factor, New South, Sydney, 2013 Provoked by attitudes towards Australia’s first female Prime Minister, the book raises questions about Australian attitudes to women’s participation in economic and political life. ‘Having our first woman Prime Minister’, the…
Palmer, Vance: The Legend of the Nineties
Vance Palmer The Legend of the Nineties, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1963; first published 1954; later editions Classic study of the contribution of the culture of the 1890s to the formation of an Australian national identity.
Inglis, KS: The Australian Colonists
KS Inglis The Australian Colonists: An Exploration of Social History 1788-1870, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic., 1974 While the subject matter is ostensibly people, war and peace, holidays and ‘the stuff of history’ in the years nominated, the book begins…
Hetherington, Michelle, ed.: Glorious Days: Australia 1913
Michelle Hetherington, ed. Glorious Days: Australia 1913, National Museum of Australia Press, Canberra, 2013 The book of the exhibition marking the centenary of Canberra. Chapters on ‘Australia in the world’ (Nicholas Brown), Mawson in Antarctica (Tom Griffiths), ‘Dreams of Empire’…
McLaren, John, ed.: Towards a New Australia
John McLaren, ed. Towards a New Australia: Under a Labor Government, Cheshire for the Victorian Fabian Society, Melbourne, 1972 Beyond its policies and plans for an imminent Labor Government (set out in chapters by Gough Whitlam and future Ministers) the…
Latham, Mark: From the Suburbs
Mark Latham From the Suburbs: Building a Nation from our Neighbourhoods, Pluto Press, Annandale, NSW, 2003 Written before the author became the Leader, then the former Leader of the Labor Party. Beyond its political prescriptions, it is an expression of…
Watson, Don: Caledonia Australis
Don Watson Caledonia Australis: Scottish Highlanders on the Frontier of Australia, Vintage, Milsons Point, NSW, 1997; first published 1984; later edition 2009 About the clash in Gippsland between immigrant Celts and Indigenous Australians. Shows how Scots dispossessed by the Highland…
Keneally,Thomas: Australia Vol. II
Thomas Keneally Australians Vol. II: Eureka to the Diggers, Crows Nest, NSW, 2012; first published 2011 Keneally’s second volume of three and continues in the style of the first, except that the cast of characters march more chronologically in chapters…
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Brett, Judith: Forgotten people
Judith Brett Robert Menzies’ Forgotten People, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, new edition 2007; first published 1992 Explores the links between Menzies’ values and language and the people he represented and who voted for him in the years after the World…
Keneally, Thomas: Australia Vol I
Thomas Keneally Australia: Origins to Eureka: Volume 1, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2010; first published 2009 Novelist and historian Keneally ‘tells the stories of a number of Australians from the Pleistocene Age to 1860. The people whose tales…
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Mares, Peter: Borderline
Peter Mares Borderline: Australia’s Treatment of Refugees and Asylum Seekers, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2001 Puts turn-of-the-century attitudes and policies towards asylum seekers in the context of Australians’ ‘deep-seated fears of invasion and the historical anxiety about the empty and defenceless…
Lawrence, Carmen: Fear and politics
Carmen Lawrence Fear and Politics, Scribe, Carlton North, Vic., 2006 The author was Premier of Western Australia and a federal Minister. She is now a professor of psychology. She explores the human experience of fear, looks at how xenophobia shapes…
Jordens, Ann-Mari: Alien to Citizen
Ann-Mari Jordens Alien to Citizen: Settling Migrants in Australia, 1945-75, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1997 Administrative history describing the profound changes in Australia’s demography after World War II. Strong on the role of the Immigration Department and its…
Hirst, John: The Australians
John Hirst The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770, Black Inc., Melbourne, 2007; later edition Penguin 2010 Hirst compiles and comments upon multiple assessments of the Australian character, from Charles Bean to Charles Dickens, Dorothea McKellar…
Davison, Graeme, et al, ed.: Australians 1888
Graeme Davison, JW McCarty & Ailsa McLeary, ed. Australians 1888, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987 One of the volumes in Australians: A Historical Library. The authors write about land and people, the regional mosaic, private lives and…
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Curthoys, Ann, AW Martin & Tim Rowse, ed.: Australians from 1939
Ann Curthoys, AW Martin & Tim Rowse, ed. Australians from 1939, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987 One of the volumes in Australians: A Historical Library. Thirty historians, political scientists and citizens contribute to sections on Australians and…
Calwell, AA: Be just and fear not
AA Calwell Be Just and Fear Not, Lloyd O’Neil, Hawthorn, Vic, 1972 Autobiography of Australia’s first Minister for Immigration (1945-49), later Leader of the (Labor) Opposition (1960-67). Includes a personal view of the commencement of the post-World War II immigration…
Atkinson, Alan & Marian Aveling, ed.: Australians 1838
Alan Atkinson & Marian Aveling, ed. Australians 1838, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, NSW, 1987 Twenty-five contributing authors describe Australia around 1838, looking at Aborigines, families, work, markets, government, justice and other topics. The diversity of Australian history –…
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Argy, Fred: Where to From Here?
Fred Argy Where to From Here? Australian Egalitarianism under Threat, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2003 Looked at the effects of economic policy on Australia’s traditional ‘fair go’, the impact of globalisation, the attitudes of the community, politicians and…
Peters-Little, Frances, Ann Curthoys & John Docker, ed.: Passionate Histories
Frances Peters-Little, Ann Curthoys & John Docker, ed. Passionate Histories: Myth, Memory and Indigenous Australia, Aboriginal History Inc. & ANU E-press, Canberra, 2010; downloadable ‘This book examines the emotional engagements of both indigenous and non-indigenous people with indigenous history. The…
Jayasuriya, Laksiri, et al, ed.: Legacies of White Australia
Laksiri Jayasuriya, David Walker & Janice Gothard, ed. Legacies of White Australia: Race, Culture, and Nation, University of Western Australia Press, Crawley, WA, 2003 The authors assess whether controversies about asylum seekers have refuelled White Australia.
Curthoys, Ann & John Docker, ed.: Genocide? Australian Aboriginal history in international perspective
Ann Curthoys & John Docker, ed. “Genocide”? Australian Aboriginal history in international perspective’, Aboriginal History, 25, 2001, special section (downloadable) Multiple contributors on aspects of genocide and aboriginality. There is a brief survey here of instances of genocide in world…
Carey, Jane & Claire McLisky, ed.: Creating White Australia
Jane Carey & Claire McLisky, ed. Creating White Australia: New Perspectives on Race, Whiteness and History, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 2009 Articles by Leigh Boucher, Jane Carey, Ann Curthoys and others ‘dealing with the question of whiteness in Australian history…
Altman, Dennis: Defying Gravity
Altman, Dennis Defying Gravity: A Political Life, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1997; Australian Public Intellectuals Network, Perth, 2004 Altman has been a gay activist and writer for more than four decades.
Altman, Dennis: From a drowning to a celebration
Dennis Altman ‘From a drowning to a celebration’, Inside Story, 11 December 2012 Edited version of a Dunstan Lecture, describing forty years of gender politics in Australia.
Arrow, Michelle: Friday on Our Minds
Michelle Arrow Friday on Our Minds: Popular Culture in Australia since 1945, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2009 Looks at popular culture since World War II through the lenses of consumerism, the impact of technological change and the…
Beaumont, Joan: Australian citizenship and the two world wars
Joan Beaumont ‘Australian citizenship and the two world wars’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 53, 2, June 2007, pp. 171–82 This article surveys Australian citizenship: its distinctive characteristics in the first half of the twentieth century, and how these…
Beaumont, Joan: Gallipoli and Australian national identity
Joan Beaumont ‘Gallipoli and Australian national identity’, Neil Garnham & Keith Jeffery, ed., Culture, Place and Identity, University College Dublin Press, Dublin, 2005, pp. 138-51 The article notes ‘the degree to which a conservative state continues to see Anzac as…
Beaumont, Joan, et al, ed.: Citizenship and internment
Joan Beaumont, Ilma Martinuzzi O’Brien & Mathew Trinca, ed. Under Suspicion: Citizenship and Internment in Australia during the Second World War, National Museum of Australia Press, Canberra, 2008 Stories of internees, revealing ‘the sometimes disturbing nature of how the nation…
Boucher, Leigh et al, ed.: Historicising Whiteness
Leigh Boucher, Jane Carey & Katherine Ellinghaus, ed. Historicising Whiteness: Transnational Perspectives on the Construction of an Identity, RMIT Press, Melbourne, 2007 Around sixty articles originally conference papers on Australian and international cases. Subjects include whiteness before White Australia, race…
Brett, Judith: Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class
Judith Brett Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class: From Alfred Deakin to John Howard, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2003 From middle-class liberal independence under Deakin to conservative populism under Howard, with lots of nuances in between.
Brett, Judith & Anthony Moran: Ordinary People’s Politics
Judith Brett & Anthony Moran Ordinary People’s Politics: Australians Talk about Life, Politics and the Future of their Country, Pluto Press Australia, Melbourne, 2006 Ordinary Australians interviewed about politics and its place in their lives during the Depression, the post…