Australian Journal of Politics and History最新文献

It is difficult to exaggerate the scale of contemporary ecological crises. These challenges, particularly climate change, necessitate new modes of politics and policy, even potentially new institutions, that seem anathema to the emphases of traditional accounts of environmental political science. In this paper, we explore contemporary ecopolitics research in Australia that is attempting to come to terms with the reality of ecological crises and the geological epoch of the Anthropocene. Showcasing a range of scholarship in this area, we argue that contemporary Australian ecopolitics research identifies and engages with a wide range of sites of politics and a significant number of (consequential) political actors. It recognises the need to engage directly with key institutions while also extending our gaze to the environment movement, community groups, financial institutions, local governments, and consumers. It acknowledges that sites of politics extend from the way ecological crises are framed in public debate to policy management, practices of private corporations and even to individual patterns of consumption. And it argues for an expansive conception of ethics beyond currently living human communities, a vision which arguably better meets the reality of ecological crises and the Anthropocene epoch.

The Chinese Nationalist government's Hong Kong policy appeared to be successful from 1946 to 1949. While its official principle was to shelve the matter until civil conflicts ceased, the government adopted tough rhetoric and actions in dealing with any troubles deriving from the colony, which underlined the uncertain political future of Hong Kong that the British could not ignore. However, this tactic was a result of the Nationalists' failure to strike a balance between the public's and local authorities' clamour for the colony's immediate retrocession and the central government's postponement policy. As a result, not only did the matter of Hong Kong remain unresolved but the public discontent against the government escalated and the Sino-British relationship reached its nadir. Yet the “unintended claim” that the failure in balancing caused posed a serious threat to British rule in Hong Kong and encouraged the latter to rethink the colony's future and how to administrate the colony peacefully in the post-war era.

As the third Irish Home Rule crisis grew more threatening from 1911 onwards, Ulster Unionists began searching for allies across the British Empire, including in Australia. This article highlights the role and influence of the Australian anti-Home Rule movement from 1911 to 1914, investigating why the Loyal Orange Institution in Australia published resolutions sympathetic to the Unionist cause. The article also investigates who the supporters were, who donated thousands of pounds in aid, or who enlisted in an Australian Ulster volunteer contingent. Most importantly, it considers how widespread and organised these Ulster sympathisers were, particularly by 1914 when they produced an anti-Home Rule petition.

Studies of academic freedom have mostly focussed on Europe and North America. Yet, any consideration of the societal crises in Africa cannot ignore the collapse of its universities and the very concept of academic freedom on the continent. Much had been expected of the universities. In Africa, the early post-independence universities took off on internationally competitive and solid foundations—thanks to the heritages and traditions bequeathed them by the colonial powers that established them. In these societies, the expectations associated with the formation and performance of the universities have their foundations in the historical evidence furnished by the definitions of success in the West. However, the postcolonial orientations of the universities in Africa have proceeded along different pathways. Ideas taken from one milieu to another can develop in unpredictable ways and may satisfy needs other than those served in their places of origin. Institutions transplanted from one society can be influenced by the practices prevalent in the receiving societies. The forces acting upon such interactions are complex. The resultant transformative impacts are also unpredictable. An appreciation of context is therefore compelling. This article discusses the crisis in Nigeria's political economy and its continued impact on the public universities from the late 1980s to the 2020s [Correction added on 26 July 2024, after first online publication: Preceding sentence has been amended for correctness.]

That bipartisanship has been required for referendums to change the Australian Constitution to succeed is regarded widely as axiomatic. But the idea of bipartisanship as a necessary condition of success is relatively new; in the first half of the twentieth century, party opposition did not loom large in accounts of why referendums failed. And for good reason. As this article shows, the importance attached to bipartisanship is based on a misreading of the record from 1906 to 1951: first, because there is one referendum—the 1946 referendum on Social Services—that passed without bipartisan support; second, because several other referendums came close to passing, despite lacking bipartisan support; and third, because bipartisanship allows for the minor party in a coalition to be opposed provided the major party is in favour—one reason why commentators have misread the success of the Social Services referendum. Whether or not bipartisanship has been necessary, it has never been regarded as sufficient. Attempts to identify more than one factor in the success of referendums have proliferated. But attempts to measure their relative importance—either in particular referendums or across referendums as a whole—have not got us very far.

Seachanging and the expansion of suburbia led to important changes in Australia's human geography during the second half of the twentieth century. However, the implications of domestic migration on electoral politics have received only limited study. The Central Coast of New South Wales was one place where these two patterns of movement converged and which came to be routinely identified in public debate as electorally marginal. In reviewing this discursive positioning across both federal and state politics over several decades, the article examines how the region's marginality was often linked to the social mix created by migration primarily from Sydney, among which retirees and long distance commuters received particular attention as cohorts of voters. The analysis then turns to electoral competition in what was thus seen as a contestable space. This spanned national, state, and local issues and the major parties sometimes pre-selected candidates offering very distinct value propositions. Overall, the Central Coast's regional political discourse reflected wider understandings of voting realignment seen around Australia, including changing perspectives on class, but also highlights how migration created new, formative communities where marginality was viewed as an important part of local political identity and practice.

Although the early Federation has been characterised as a “dependency,” some items in the existing literature suggest the exertion by the Commonwealth of a degree of initiative in foreign policies in the years before the Great War, notably with respect to trade, immigration, defence, and the Pacific region. This paper argues that—impelled by globalising forces—this initiative was also exercised in the emerging international sphere, a fact largely neglected in the literature heretofore. The examples discussed include in relation to global postal conventions, international radiotelegraphy, international safety conventions, and the collection of commercial and customs statistics according to agreed transnational standards. Dispatching plenipotentiary delegates to international meetings on its own account, the Commonwealth assumed the status of a separate and distinct state jurisdiction, joining the relevant international conventions in question and implementing their provisions where relevant through legislation.