The Engagement Pendulum: Australia’s Alternating Approach to Irregular Migration

This paper examines the Australian federal government’s use of regional engagement to stop irregular migration. It shows that Australia’s policy elites have long debated whether regional cooperation is useful or necessary for stopping irregular migration. The debate among policy elites bears little relationship to the academic and ideological controversy over Australia’s “engagement” with Asia. Rather, this controversy is defined by pragmatism and operates akin to a pendulum, with an action–reaction cycle occurring where governments seek alternative approaches to what they perceive as the failures of their predecessors. This paper shows that the governments who have championed Asian engagement have been no more willing to seek a regional approach to irregular migration than those who seem to downplay engagement. Differing perspectives on regional cooperation is an important and largely under-examined aspect of Australia’s broader national debate about irregular migration. Given the significance of this issue to Australian politics, it also serves as an important case study in the wider context of Australia’s relationship with and attitudes towards the Asia-Pacific.     

“Then in 1915”: Eric Bogle’s “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda”

The anti-war song “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” has become a cultural icon in Australia, and elsewhere has been recorded over 130 times in 10 different languages. The song was written in 1971 by Eric Bogle, a Scottish immigrant to Australia, who has penned more than 250 powerful compositions, which, among other things, focus on the failure of history to impress upon youth the futility of war. Appropriately, Bogle was named Australian Humanist of the Year in 2001 for capturing “the ethos of humanism through his perceptive and individualistic songwriting with its exposure of racism, bigotry, warmongering and injustice of all kinds”. Additionally, he was awarded the United Nations Peace Medal (1986), and was made Member of the Order of Australia (1987). This article asks why a song written by a Scot in Australia, fifty-six years after the Dardanelles campaign, feels as if it has “always existed. That it belongs to culture and country”. It questions what the appeal imbued within the lyrics of those five short verses might be and recounts the story behind the creation of what Pete Seeger referred to as “one of the world’s greatest songs”. Through interviews with the writer, and an examination of the relevant historiography, this article presents a study of “the most potent ballad of the age”. It also examines what Bogle meant when he said that it was a song that “came into its time”.     

Australia and Brexit: Déjà Vu All Over Again?

Abstract

Recalling the debate about Britain’s applications to join the European Economic Community in the 1960s, Australians are now reacting to and assessing the implications of the Brexit vote for Australia. However, the contemporary situation is very different from that which prevailed in the 1960s. The article assesses Australian commentary and reactions to Brexit before and after the vote. Taking account of the various possible versions of Brexit, there is an assessment of the range of economic and political-strategic implications for Australia. Whatever the final form of Brexit, Australia will need to foster close relationships with both the UK and the post-Brexit European Union. In relation to immigration policy in a post-Brexit UK, Australia’s immigration system does not necessarily provide the ‘answer’; Australia’s relationship with New Zealand through the agreement on Closer Economic Relations might be relevant to Brexit in at least some respects as another model for how economic integration might develop in a regional context. If Brexit was at least in part a populist right-wing reaction to globalisation and neoliberalism, parallels in Australia can also be seen, such as Pauline Hanson’s One Nation; other parallels in Australia relating to Brexit include issues relating to political prudence and the manner of constitutional change.     

Shaped on the Anvil of Mars: Vance and Nettie Palmer and the Great War

In Australia as elsewhere within the belligerent nations of the Great War, dissenting thinkers were marginalised with the mobilisation of militarism. Vance and Nettie Palmer, Australia's most important literary partnership in the interwar period, were initially critical of the war, their response typical of the English radical intelligentsia among whom they were living at the time of its outbreak. Forced back to Australia in 1915, the Palmers had to re-establish themselves in its increasingly turbulent intellectual battlefields. Nettie's earlier anti-war beliefs and cosmopolitanism were undermined while Vance became ever more deeply enmeshed in a discourse concerning the virtues of the “ordinary people”, which encompassed the men of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). Nevertheless, in their extensive writings about Australia, neither Palmer ever endorsed the legend of the heroic Anzacs. The Great War, however, profoundly shaped their political consciousness and their choice of genre and writing strategies, as it did others of their literary generation. This article will show that the war was a far more important influence on their work than usually acknowledged in Australian literary scholarship, and thereby reveal some of the cultural patterns that shaped their generation of Australian radical writers and intellectuals — particularly in Melbourne, arguably the heartland for the tradition of democratic literary nationalism which the Palmers have been seen to epitomise.     

Many Voices,One Ambition: Local Government,Post-War Reconstruction and Northern Development in Australia

Established in 1944, the North Queensland Local Government Association made an impact on post-war reconstruction and northern development in Australia. The association modernised infrastructure and improved social conditions in Queensland's north, as well as launching an influential publicity campaign to promote a massive northern development scheme. In an era when federal proposals for developing Australia's northern regions often struggled to make a convincing case for Commonwealth investment, these were significant contributions to nation-building. Putting substance before parochialism, the association fostered cooperation among municipal authorities and patiently lobbied the Queensland government. But some members complained that their region was part of a “neglected north” and called for a more assertive campaign. By the late 1950s, having developed regional infrastructure, grown in confidence, and looking for new challenges, the association shifted its lobbying to target the Commonwealth government. The change led to the “People the North” publicity campaign, which influenced federal northern development policy. This article analyses the campaigns led by the North Queensland Local Government Association in the twenty years after 1944. It illuminates a neglected part of Australia's political history: the contribution of regional political voices from Australia's north to nation-building projects such as post-war reconstruction and northern development.     

The Breadwinner, his Wife and their Welfare: Identity, Expertise and Economic Security in Australian Post-War Reconstruction

The architects of Australian post-war reconstruction had learned from the experience of the Depression that subordinating the social order to economic objectives could have disastrous results. In Australia as elsewhere, interwar political and civic institutions were not sufficiently robust to protect society from the instability of a system based on the economically rational choices of individual entrepreneurs. High unemployment, which had characterised the interwar years and reached catastrophic levels in the Depression, convinced the architects of post-war reconstruction that new political institutions were necessary. The civil and political institutions they attempted to create were expressed in a particular anthropology constituted around their own identity as experts and the identities of the entrepreneur, the breadwinner and his wife.     

‘An act of faith’ or a new ‘Brown Empire’? The dismissal of India’s international anti-Racism, 1945–1961

At the inaugural UN session in 1946, an Indian-sponsored resolution was passed with a two-thirds majority against South Africa’s racist treatment of Indians. India continued its activism over racism and apartheid throughout the 1950s, though the issue was increasingly seen as a painful yearly ritual. Still, Indian diplomats persisted in raising the issue every year, despite diminishing results. The British settler-colonies were particularly offended by India’s campaign, as it challenged the discursive justification for their existence. They rejected what they saw as India’s emotional, hypocritical, even imperialist, campaign against racism. By tracing the construction and rejection of anti-racist politics, we examine the dismissal of racism as a ‘legitimate’ international issue.     

Pacific Regionalism and the Polynesian Leaders Group

ABSTRACT

In November 2011, the Polynesian Leaders Group (PLG) was formed. The inclusion of Samoa, Tonga and French Polynesia gives it enough political muscle to have some influence on Pacific regionalism, but exactly what this will be is uncertain. Notably, it was formed during a tense period for regionalism; Australia’s and New Zealand’s disproportionate influence in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat was increasingly being called into question, while Fiji was crowned the chair of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) even though it was then expelled from the PIF. To date, the PLG’s most notable work has been done in relation to climate change, while it also promises to address decolonisation, both of which are pressing issues on the regional agenda. These might be issue-areas where the PLG will make its mark. Another might be in counterbalancing the increasing regional influence of the MSG, which over the past 10 years has been willing to act independently of the PIF and its traditional benefactors: Australia and New Zealand. An examination of when and why the PLG was formed, how its membership is determined, and its position on key regional issues might provide answers about its regional implications.     

From the Rainy Place to the Burnt Palace: How Social Movements Form their Political Strategies. The Case of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba

How do social movements form their political strategies? The relevant theory pays considerable attention to structure, and argues that when political opportunities are open, movements are more likely to opt for a systemic political strategy; when they are closed, movements are expected to take a more revolutionary turn. However, political opportunities can make some options appear more ‘realistic’ and others less so, but movements don't always behave ‘realistically’. They might explain when movements are more likely to mobilise and what repertoires they adopt once they do so, but they do not account for what happens earlier on: by what mechanisms the movements form their political strategies. Exploring the case of the cocaleros of the Chapare, this article argues that more emphasis should be placed on mechanisms that are internal to the movements, such as: (a) the resonance of other political experiences at home and abroad, (b) internal struggles for ideological hegemony, and (c) the political formation of their grassroots.     

“People the North”: Nation‐building in 1960s Australia

The People the North Committee, founded in Townsville in 1962, was true to its name. It wanted to treble the population of northern Australia in a decade. Putting people before profits, the committee insisted that Australians had a moral obligation to prolifically populate their northern lands. Neither the ambition nor the rationale was new. In fact, the People the North Committee was the last gasp of a grand demographic aspiration that went back more than a hundred years. Thereafter, through to the present day, proposals for northern development have prioritised economic over demographic gains: profits before people. This article examines the ambitions and advocacy of the People the North Committee, setting them in the longer historical trajectory of the aspiration to people the north. In doing so, it offers a window onto a neglected facet of the nation‐building project in Australia.     

Asia’s Security Triangles: Maritime Minilateralism in the Indo-Pacific

Since the early years of the twenty-first century, a number of key regional governments have consciously chosen to alter the way they talk about the region, and have now largely shifted from using the ‘Asia-Pacific’ to the ‘Indo-Pacific’ construct. But after three decades of utilising the ‘Asia-Pacific’ concept, why has this been the case and how might this shift in geographical conceptualisation alter the strategic framework of the region? This paper argues that the ‘Indo-Pacific’ is a regional reconceptualisation utilised by Japan, Australia, India and the USA to address deficiencies in Asia’s maritime security and institutional architecture, which are being simultaneously influenced by a more assertive Chinese posture and waning U.S. influence. Additionally, the Indo-Pacific concept has developed in tandem with a transformation in the regional security architecture. The utilisation of maritime minilateralism between Japan, India, Australia and the USA supplements Asia’s bilateral American alliances, with an array of trilateral security dialogues or ‘security triangles’. The Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific shift is really an instance of an emerging minilateral security regionalism, rather than the predominant forms of bilateral and multilateral security and economic regionalism that have dominated Asia in recent decades.     

Australia’s 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper: Deconstruction and Critique

The 2017 Foreign Policy White Paper identifies major themes and recommends preferred strategies in Australia’s engagement with the world. These themes and strategies relate to geopolitics, economics and the ‘new international agenda’; there is also a more specific focus on Australia’s Pacific island neighbours and Timor-Leste. There is a strong emphasis on perceived Australian national interests throughout the document. The geopolitical discussion is primarily ‘realist’; economically the document is pro-globalisation; the discussion of the ‘new international agenda’ involves an Australian-oriented pragmatism; there is an assertion of Australian leadership in the South Pacific. With some minor criticism, Labor has accepted the general direction advocated in the White Paper. The document is thus indicative of the likely future direction of Australian foreign policy. Lack of US response indicates declining US engagement with Australia and the Asia-Pacific or Indo-Pacific region. China, as the other major power highly significant for Australia, has been low-key in its criticisms.     

“For They Knew What They Did” – What Swiss Voters Did (Not) Know About The Mass Immigration Initiative

After the vote of 9 February 2014, many attributed the surprising result to voter ignorance. The basic claim was that the majority of those voting in favour of the initiative possessed only a weak understanding of what the likely outcome(s) would be if their choice prevailed. However, the analysis of the voters' knowledge level shows that they were comparably well aware of what the proposal at hand was about. Moreover, most voters voted their true preferences. They were also well aware about the possible economic ramifications acceptance could have for the relationship between Switzerland and the European Union and they were willing to take the risk. However, what should give the initiative's opponents a glimmer of hope is the fact that a majority believed that the principle of free movement would somehow be negotiable. Given the ongoing refusal of the EU to renegotiate that principle, these voters might have become less confident about its negotiability than they were before the vote.     

The Country of Sexualised Children: Whiteness,Innocence, and the “Sexualisation of Childhood”

This article argues that the sexualisation of childhood discourses have a distinct history in Australia. To advance this argument, I will explore the similarities between these discourses and discourses surrounding the iconic Australian “lost child”. In all of these discourses, a white child (here a symbol of White Australia’s future and past) becomes lost in an unforgiving and dangerous environment. This child is assumed to be asexual, though with the likelihood that they will mature into reproductive heterosexuality. This latter point will be illuminated in the final section of the article, which will focus specifically on the 2016 criticisms of the Safe Schools Coalition Australia. These criticisms are the most recent examples of anti-sexualisation discourses in Australia.     

B.H.P.’s “Place in the Industrial Sun”: Whyalla in its Golden Age

Whyalla epitomised the promises of industrialism and consumerism during Australia’s Golden Age of capitalism, roughly 1945–1975. Located on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula, Whyalla was a bustling industrial town (later a city) following the Second World War. It was home to the shipyard of Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited (BHP) and, from 1965, a steelworks. Before the war, Whyalla had been a company town, one planned and directed by BHP. Following the Second World War, it had morphed into a hybrid public–private town, albeit one that was heavily influenced by BHP, so much so that many still considered Whyalla to be a company town. Drawing from company materials, parliamentary records, oral histories, and the Whyalla News, this article argues that, together, BHP, the South Australian government, and residents conveyed and developed Whyalla to be an “Industrial Eden”. These actors forged postwar Whyalla to be a metaphor for what BHP, South Australia, and, ultimately, Australia had to offer. Whyalla represented progress, modernity, abundance, and stability. Moreover, it was presented and even accepted as a great place to live and work. For a moment, Whyalla was a capitalist utopia.     

“Extremely Rightful” Resistance: Land Appropriation and Rural Agitation in Contemporary Vietnam

Building on ethnographic fieldwork in a northern Vietnamese village, this article explores a rural protest against the appropriation of arable land for a development project. The focus is on villagers’ collective memories of an exceptional protest staged in 2010. The aim of the protest was to pressure local district authorities to increase the compensation villagers agreed to take three years earlier. While originally accepting compensation when their holdings were appropriated to build an industrial park, they later considered that the compensation paid was unfair and that some funds were misappropriated. They were aware that the likelihood of getting additional compensation was small and the risk of repression high. In tracing their struggle, the article argues that villagers did not seek to retain land as their primary subsistence source or as cherished ancestral land. Neither were they driven by an abstract sense of justice. Rather, they represented themselves as active, responsible decision-makers, determined to risk their own safety to bring their family a better future. They therefore employed an “extremely rightful” form of resistance rarely documented in the scholarship on Asia. They not only confined actions within officially sanctioned channels, but also underplayed all oppositional intentions against central and local authorities.     

Peacekeeping from Oceania: Perspectives from Australia,New Zealand and Fiji

Abstract

This article gives an overview of the involvement of Australia, New Zealand and Fiji in peacekeeping operations with attention to motives, experience and ‘lessons learnt’. Australia and New Zealand have been strongly influenced by regional considerations and an understanding of good international citizenship. Fiji’s contribution has been determined less by regional considerations and more by its position as a small developing country whose peacekeeping activities bring economic benefits, although it could be argued that by providing a basis for extending military forces they have contributed indirectly to political instability. Police contributions have been increasingly important to Australia and New Zealand and they have advocated a stronger role for police in other situations around the world.     

“Time to Speak Out”: The 1980s Australian Gay Press and Personal Accounts of Living with HIV

This article considers the significance of gay men’s personal accounts of living with HIV or AIDS that were published in the gay press across the 1980s. Editors utilised individuals’ accounts of living with the illness to challenge mainstream media representations of gay men’s physical and emotional demise in the “final stages” of the debilitating illness. Such accounts conveyed the message that it was possible to resume one’s life after receiving a positive diagnosis. Gay men’s personal accounts of living with HIV or AIDS evolved from anonymous anecdotes to articles accompanied by the narrator’s full name and photograph by the end of the decade. This shift is attributed to Australia’s Third National AIDS Conference in 1988, whereby people with HIV and AIDS publicly disclosed their positive statuses. This article locates gay men’s personal accounts of living with HIV in a broader transnational shift towards the visibility of people with HIV and AIDS that was underway at that time.     

The United Kingdom’s Economic Relations with New Zealand and Australia after Brexit

This article examines the current state of economic relations that the United Kingdom has with New Zealand and Australia, in light of the former’s decision to leave the European Union. Although there are prospects for future trade between these countries post-Brexit based on the three countries’ current comparative advantages, perhaps the greatest scope is for greater trade in services along with greater investment flows. Trade in food produce would be affected by changes in trade policy post-Brexit but other goods such as forestry, mineral and manufacturing products would be more affected by changes in general economic conditions and the relative competiveness of the industries in international markets. Already these aspects of trade are important and are expected to grow and develop over time. Much of the future negotiations between the three countries will take up a range of issues associated with investment and the trade in services and much of the future prospects for growth in trade might depend on the success of these negotiations.     

How to be a Girl: Consumerism Meets Guidance in the Australian Women’s Weekly’s Teen Segments, 1952–1959

In 1952, when Australian teenagers were beginning to emerge as their own distinct social and consumer group, the Australian Women’s Weekly introduced a column specifically targeted at teens. “Youth Sums Up” was intended for both boys and girls, but by 1954 it had developed into For Teenagers, a monthly lift-out aimed predominantly at girls, which became Australia’s first version of a national teen girl magazine. In this article, I examine the ways in which the Weekly used its teen segments and lift-outs to mould teenage girls into the 1950s feminine ideal, and to sell the products that reflected the attitudes and values of the time to this new and powerful young market. I also demonstrate that while the Weekly’s teen segments promoted a traditional femininity, some of its teen girl readers publicly rejected these notions within the pages of the magazine, giving us a broader understanding of teenage girls, girl culture, and what is usually defined as a purely conservative decade.