Australian Medical Intellectuals and the Great War

This article considers the way in which the Great War created unique conditions where medical intellectuals became part of a wider canvas of debate about psychology and medicine; mind and body; and, more broadly, crossed the artificial divide between the humanities and the medical sciences. Medicine has not been usually identified as a field for “intellectuals” as such. The nature of cultural and social analysis lends itself more readily to those working in the fields of sociology, political science, literature and history. But the medical intellectuals who are the subject of this article can be seen as extending our understanding of the relationship between the self and society. Such an intellectual engagement was considerably assisted, it is argued, by the advent of the Medical Journal of Australia a month before the outbreak of war. which initially served to document practices associated with medical science, but quickly evolved into a journal that connected medicine to the broader society and wider culture. The devastating impact of the war provided an extraordinary context within which these discussions took place, and radically challenged many assumptions held by the medical profession, especially with regard to the relationship between the mind and the body.     

John Treloar,Official War Art and the Australian War Memorial*

John Treloar's involvement in the Australian War Memorial began in 1917, and he was Director from 1920 until his death in 1952. The idea of a national war memorial serving also as a museum, gallery and library was not his: the credit for that goes to Charles Bean. But there would have been no museum, gallery or library without Treloar's organisational ability and collecting genius. Treloar was responsible at first for collecting a documentary record, but later as the vision expanded, he began to acquire many other kinds of material, including art. It was an unusual challenge for a soldier, public servant, and man who scrupulously distanced his emotions from his work. This article examines aspects of Australia's official and commissioned war art and teases out the relationship between the bureaucrat and the artist. I suggest that the administrative effort involved in the war art schemes has to be recognised as part of the process of cultural production, and that in these circumstances the life of the bureaucrat is as worthy of exploration as that of the artist.     

No Just War: Political Reflections on Australian Churches' Condemnation of the Iraq War

This paper analyses the potentially positive role churches can play in encouraging public debate and moral reasoning on security matters. In particular, it explores Australian churches' vocal condemnation of Australia's involvement in the Iraq war through examining responses of spokespersons from the three largest Christian churches in Australia, namely Catholic, Anglican and Uniting Churches. It examines three types of reasons given for the condemnation: legal explanations of the lack of a plausible justification for war without UN sanctions; religious and moral reasons that defend peace and reconciliation; and political reasons that a war led by the “Christian West” increases global enmity and the likelihood of terrorism. I situate this analysis within just war theory. I suggest that churches can play an important social role in fostering tolerance, inter‐faith dialogue and peace.     

The Campaign for Japanese‐Australian Children to enter Australia, 1957–1968: A History of Post‐War Humanitarianism

Between 1957 and 1968, the Prime Minister Robert Menzies and several of his ministers, including Alexander Downer, the Minister for Immigration from 1958 to 1963, were inundated with hundreds of letters of protest demanding that action be taken to assist Japanese children fathered by Australian soldiers who had been stationed in Japan during the Allied occupation and beyond it between 1946 and 1956. The response from the Australian public forms the basis of this article to consider how attempts for the transnational movement of children in the postwar period point to understandings of humanitarianism at this time. The response to the predicament of the Japanese‐Australian children offers, I argue, an intriguing narrative of postwar humanitarianism that articulates the beginning of several historic shifts. The incident points to the growing challenge to the White Australia Policy, paradoxically on racialised and paternalistic grounds to bring white Australian children to Australia. The government shifted the discussion from one of immigration to foreign aid as a way of diffusing the public response and in doing so positioned itself in the new narrative about supporting rehabilitation and development. The media was crucial in evoking a response that depoliticized the issue of responsibility by reducing it to an emotional reaction.     

Past and Present: From Misunderstanding Sexuality to Misunderstanding Gender Identity in Australian Refugee Claims

This paper analyses the past and present treatment of people applying for asylum on the grounds of their sexual orientation in Australia. Despite having relatively progressive legislative measures for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) citizens, the treatment of refugees applying for refugee status based on their sexual orientation has historically been dogged by questionable and biased decision‐making. It is argued that early claims were initially plagued by a number of issues, notably the employment of discretion reasoning and errors in credibility assessment. The second section of this paper takes a deeper look at claims made in Australia between 2016 and mid‐2018 to assess whether there has been any improvement in decision‐making. It is argued that Australian decision‐making for sexual orientation‐based claims has demonstrably improved, encouraged by the introduction of new departmental guidelines for assessing such claims in 2016. However, it emerged in later claims that some decision‐makers continue to confuse sexuality and gender identity, demonstrating that issues remain for applicants in Australia. Ultimately, it is argued that in order to continue to improve decision‐making, the Australian Immigration Department and tribunals need to be more transparent about the development and implementation of decision‐making guidelines.     

Regimes of truth: Australian combat photography in the Second World War

This paper examines the policies and directions framing the professional practice of Australian combat photographers in the Second World War. It argues that while their endeavours to offer an account of the nation at war were constrained by predictable considerations of politics and censorship, their commitment to truth was also framed and constricted by an array of cultural considerations. The nation’s ongoing engagement with the history of the First World War, the contrasting organisational cultures of the bureaucracies that the photographers served, and Australian culture’s visual inarticulacy concerning death on the battlefield played key roles both individually and collectively in shaping the photographers’ practices and outputs. The paper will trace the operations of these influences and contend that, as a result, the photographers’ visual record of the Second World War, particularly as it related to the death of Australian servicemen, served to conceal rather than reveal the ultimate truth about the Australian experience of the war.     

Policing protest in the Australian Capital Territory: the introduction and use of the Public Order Act 1971

This article examines the reaction by the Australian Federal Government to the protest movements of the 1960s–1970s and their attempts to use public order legislation to thwart radical discontent in Australia. It argues that the Public Order (Protection of Persons and Property) Act 1971 was aimed at the threat of “violent” protests, particularly the tactic of the “sit-in”, and that to this end, the legislation was an overreaction to the actual threat posed by the protest movements at the time. It also shows that after a long gestation period, the Act was ill-equipped to deal with the changing nature of demonstrations in the 1970s, such as the problems caused by the erection of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. Thus, after an initial flurry of use in mid-1971, the law has been seldom used since.     

“Unbounded Enthusiasm”:1 Australian Historians and the Outbreak of the Great War

There is a growing body of European scholarship revising the traditionally held view that the peoples of Europe greeted the war with boundless patriotic enthusiasm. Niall Ferguson, Jean-Jacques Becker and Jeffery Verhey in particular have argued that the “August Days” were more myth than reality. The outbreak of the war in Australia has not yet attracted similar attention. With few exceptions, Australian scholars writing about the opening days and weeks of the war have agreed that Australian popular reaction was dominated by overwhelming enthusiasm. This paper will explore the Australian historiography, since the 1930s, and assess the extent to which the “traditional” interpretation is in need of re-investigation.     

Croatian Anti‐Fascism in the Second World War: An Australian Perspective

The historiography of the Second World War in Yugoslavia rests on the dichotomous resistance/collaboration paradigm pitting “Yugoslav” resisters against extreme nationalist collaborators. This historiography also presents us with a Balkanist interpretation of the war as exceptionally savage and brutal. The collapse of Yugoslavia led to the collapse of the Partisan Epic. It also led to the rise of nationalist historiographies of the war and the rehabilitation of collaborators, notably the Serbian Chetniks. A corrective to the exceptionalism of many standard studies of the war in Yugosalvia may be found in an analysis of the experiences of Australian Yugoslavs and their perceptions of resistance and collaboration. Based almost entirely on hitherto underutilised archival sources, this article traces the differences between two rival Yugoslav groups in Australia: (mostly Serbian) royalist supporters of the Chetniks and the old centralist regime, and Croatian supporters of Tito's Partisans and the idea of a new, federative Yugoslavia. It demonstrates that both groups were adept at mobilising opinion and actively engaging in the political process to advance their cause. However, the Croats and their organisational structures had a wider reach. Furthermore, they were able to demonstrate that they were contributing more to the Allied cause — which was their own — than their rivals. This had an impact on their standing in Australian society and on attitudes towards Yugoslavs and Yugoslavia. Finally, this article sheds new light on the Australian home‐front, revealing the generally civil and tolerant attitude of state and commonwealth governments towards “friendly aliens” in their desire both to be connected to their country of birth and integrated into their adopted homeland.