“Rediscovery”, “Reinvigoration” and “Redefinition” in Perpetuity: Australian Engagement with India 1983–2011

For the past twenty‐five years Australia's bilateral relationship with India has been typified by an ongoing process of “rediscovery”, irrespective of whether Labor or Liberal administrations have steered foreign policy. This article explores the reasons why this might be the case by analysing Australia's foreign policy approaches to India spanning the period 1983 to 2011. It interrogates various Labor and Liberal strategies that have been mobilised to “reinvigorate” the relationship and searches for reasons why they have only been partially successful in strengthening Australia's rapport with India. The authors draw upon discussions with strategic affairs editors of India's major daily newspapers and current affairs journals to gain insights into Indian impressions of Australia from a political and foreign policy perspective.     

I,Diarist: Examining Australian Politics from the “Inside”

Political diaries can claim literary, political and intellectual significance, yet they have rarely been subject to serious or extended enquiry. In this article we offer the first comprehensive survey of the Australian political diary. We also analyse these writings in some depth, suggesting that, taken as a whole, the diaries reveal three Weberian “ideal types” of the politician: the “patrician”, the “professional”, and the “radical”. These ideal types are used to shed a new light on the functioning and limitations of parliamentary democracy in Australia.     

“The Politics of Political Advertising” in Australia and Britain, 1970–1989

The role of advertising in the production of political campaigns deserves more consideration than it has previously received. My study examines advertising agencies associated with election campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s, investigating their decisions to accept or reject political accounts. Focusing on Britain and Australia, and using a range of primary sources including the industry press, interviews and memoirs, I demonstrate that an agency's decision to accept a political account is always complex, contested and highly contingent. Accepting a political account may alienate clients and agency staff who support another party. Campaigns are labour‐intensive and may detract from an agency's core business. Involvement in a losing campaign can damage an agency's reputation, just as association with a successful one may attract clients. Agencies are often unsure how to approach political advertising where traditional techniques may not be suitable. Such concerns about accepting a political account will likely be put aside where an agency principal has close personal ties to a party or leader.     

“In the Corridors of Power”: How the Animal Movement Changed Australian Politics, 1979–1991

Foreshadowed by the anti‐war cause, women's and gay liberation struggles, and the conservation movement, and inspired by Peter Singer's 1975 book Animal Liberation, a fresh wave of animal activism emerged in Australia in the mid‐seventies. In the struggle for animal rights, campaigners used a range of methods, but what characterised the eighties was their lobbying. They engaged politicians, built alliances, and participated in the state. By doing so, they changed Australian politics: they extended the political agenda; influenced public policy; and reshaped the state bureaucracy to include new avenues for addressing animal protection. At the same time, their outcomes were limited, sometimes founded on compromise and failure. The property status of animals was a fundamental constraint that produced differentiated and contradictory policy outcomes. The degree to which the animal movement succeeded in reducing animal suffering is a contentious matter that divides minimalist and maximalist accounts. Ultimately, however, animal advocates were instrumental in advancing the basic animal protection framework evident in Australia today.     

An Australian “Historikerstreit”? Review Article

Frontier Conflict. The Australian Experience. Edited by Bain Attwood and S.G. Foster
Historical Records of Australia Series III Despatches and Papers Relating to the History of Tasmania, Vol. VIII, Tasmania, January-December 1829. Edited by Peter Chapman
The History Wars. By Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark
Whitewash. On Keith Windschuttle's Fabrication of Aboriginal History. Edited by Robert Manne
The Fabrication of Aboriginal History. By Keith Windschuttle     

Cuba: From “Dollarization” to “Euroization” or “Peso Reconsolidation”?

Since its “depenalization” in 1993, the U.S. dollar has become possibly a more significant component of Cuba's money supply than the old peso. What are the alternatives? The euro seems inappropriate, given the inevitability of eventual normalization of relations with the United States. More advantageous would be to restore the Cuban peso, though this would involve unifying the bifurcated economic structure and the dual monetary and exchange rate systems. The Cuban government has yet to announce its plans. This study argues that an appropriate mix of exchange rate, monetary, fiscal, and income or wage and salary policies should support a rehabilitation of the Cuban peso.     

The “Thin Dividing Line”: Prime Ministers and the Problem of Australian Nationalism, 1972–1996

This paper is concerned with the way in which Australian prime ministers gave expression to an idea of “national community” in the post–1972 era. With the declining relevance of the British connection, the departure of “great and powerful” friends from the region, the imperative of engagement with Asia and the emerging concept of Australia as a “multicultural” society, one of the central challenges for these leaders has been whether or not they could offer an alternative myth of community which would preserve social cohesion in the new times. This raises an important historical question concerning Australian political culture at this time — what happened to the need for nationalism? By examining the speeches of Prime Ministers Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke and Keating, it can be seen that far from asserting an old–style, exclusive Australian nationalism, in most cases these leaders expressed great caution and hesitation towards the idea of nationalism itself.     

From “Queue Jumpers” to “Absolute Scum of the Earth”: Refugee and Organised Criminal Deviance in Australian Asylum Policy

The arrival of asylum seekers by boat in Australia is no longer represented as a threat by the Australian government because of characteristics of asylum seekers themselves, but is instead predominantly represented as threatening because of the involvement of transnational organised crime in the form of people smugglers. This progression, which is demonstrated by comparison of the approach of the Howard coalition government with that of the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments, is best understood by reference to conventional understandings of organised crime and irregular migration, and critical accounts of both phenomena. Understood in this way, organised crime and people‐smuggling discourses serve to externalise the asylum seeker “problem” and maintain punitive policies, inhibiting the development of effective regional responses to the issue.     

“We are Human Beings,and have a Past”: The “Adjustment” of Migrants and the Australian Assimilation Policies of the 1950s

This article argues that the assimilation policy adopted by the Australian government during the 1950s was based on a denial of a migrant's past. The assumption that the migrant would readily merge into Australian cultural life ignored the ways in which past stories and memories shape the self. Through an analysis of the Good Neighbour Councils I explore the nature of assimilation that was based on a neglect of collective war memories of immigrant groups. This perspective is distinguished from that adopted by several theorists of the day such as W.D. Borrie and Jean Martin whose studies were less crude and one‐dimensional. The experiences of Greek migrants are examined to consider how Greek war stories could not often find expression or recognition in the assimilationist climate of the post‐war period.     

Australian Reporting of the Indonesian Killings of 1965–66: The Media as the “First Rough Draft of History”

This article examines Australian press coverage of the Indonesian killings of 1965–66, and considers its legacy for the historical consciousness of events in Indonesia. The Indonesian killings of 1965–66 occurred on Australia's doorstep, at a time when the Cold War dominated the front pages of Australian newspapers. By examining articles from one of Australia's leading newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald, we show that press coverage of the killings was both limited and distorted. Comments made by correspondents reporting from Indonesia at the time suggest reasons why this was the case. In the rush to write a “first rough draft of history”, the killings in Indonesia were treated as background to the story of leadership change in Jakarta and the defeat of Communism.