Australian Journal of Politics and History最新文献

In the second half of 2022, ACT politics returned to some of its staples: progressive social policy, environmental initiatives, and debate about the Labor-Greens government's signature light rail project were all prominent. The return of the decade-old light rail debate, traversed through multiple Territory elections and much commentary between, elicited groans in some quarters. But there were also some surprises, including a minor constitutional crisis centred around COVID-19 precautions in the Legislative Assembly.

ACT governments of all parties have a history of clashing with more conservative federal governments over social policy, with the federal government usually prevailing. They have repeatedly disagreed over drug harm minimisation and LGBTQ rights, but the most enduring point of contention has been voluntary euthanasia, which federal parliament prohibited territory governments from introducing in 1997. For supporters of the ban, euthanasia was a fraught moral issue, but many of its critics focused on the territory rights aspect, arguing there was no equivalent limit on state legislation. This perspective gained ground from 2017 as the states passed euthanasia legislation, seemingly leaving the territories behind.

The May 2022 federal election delivered a likely majority for overturning the ban, and in July federal Labor MPs Alicia Payne and Luke Gosling, from the ACT and Northern Territory respectively, introduced a private members' bill to do just that (RiotAct, 4 July 2022). Over the next six months the bill made its way through the House of Representatives and Senate, passing the latter on 1 December. Chief Minister Andrew Barr and Opposition Leader Elizabeth Lee, both supporters of the bill, were present in the gallery, with Barr welcoming the conclusion of a matter “already conclusively resolved in the minds of the public” (Canberra Times, 2 December 2022).

When it came to drug law reform, by contrast, the ACT occupied its more usual place as first mover within the Federation. Labor backbencher Michael Pettersson's bill to decriminalise small quantities of illicit drugs other than marijuana, already decriminalised in the Territory, was certainly a national first. But by the time it passed in October it had also been much-debated, and the event was muted: the Liberals promised to repeal the measure if elected in 2024 and Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw warned about “narco-tourism”, but no new arguments emerged (Canberra Times, 21 October 2022).

A six-month drug testing trial launched by the government in July was another first, and it attracted considerable attention for what it disclosed about the quality of drugs sold in Canberra: in its first month some 27 per cent of purported cocaine samples contained no cocaine, while one supposed sample of methamphetamine was simply sugar (RiotAct, 2 September 2022). Unsurprisingly, a significant minority of people us

This article focusses on ongoing discussions about the place of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and the Franco dictatorship (1939–75) in Spain's democracy. Following the suspension of Judge Baltasar Garzón by the Spanish Supreme Court in 2010, who had indicted General Francisco Franco (1892–1975) and thirty-four accomplices under international law for committing crimes against humanity, a debate arose between leading intellectuals in Spain about the growing international influence on Spain's war past. This debate revealed that a group of influential left-wing intellectuals attempted to curb the social and political influence of the citizens' memory movements. The author observes how this happened by applying three strategies: the foreign strategy, the nationalistic-ethical strategy, and the saturation strategy. He concludes that the growing international pressure on Spain's handling of the Civil War and dictatorship led to a “Spanification” of the “culture of the transición” as a national memory, causing the memory movements to lose momentum and curbing the international influence on Spain's handling of its dictatorial past.

This article describes a “working model” that started as a culturally appropriate workshop created by students and staff involved in the Certificate III in Visual Arts at Goulburn Ovens Institute of TAFE, Shepparton Campus, Victoria in 2018. The Yubbi Yarning Circle Model (YYCM) sees First Nations Artists, as both Facilitators and Storytellers, expressing the ongoing effects of Aboriginal Exemption using visual storytelling. We explore how the model of a visual narrative can be utilised in further cultural activities planned for research into Aboriginal Exemption and how this art resource may effectively be disseminated to Storytellers who not only have a history of Aboriginal Exemption, but also more broadly in the wider community. The YYCM approach is multi-disciplinary and combines the cultural healing practices of the Yarning Circle, the Mariku knowledge of symbology, participatory action research using decolonised methodologies and findings on behavioral research from Northern Ireland about how the narrative can heal trauma.

This volume of the Australian Journal of Politics and History presents an edited collection of papers delivered by emerging and established researchers at the Second Rethinking & Researching 20th Century Aboriginal Exemption Symposium, co-hosted by the University of the Sunshine Coast with La Trobe University in October 2021. The papers reveal the human costs, hardships and legacies of the state policies of Aboriginal Exemption last century which supposedly offered the promise of freedom to Indigenous Australians confined to reserves and missions. Equally, the papers explore innovative and culturally safe ways to investigate and further understand Aboriginal exemption that ensure Ancestors and Elders, who actively negotiated, resisted and subverted its use, are recognised and honoured.

After the March state election, a Labor government was installed after convincingly ousting Steven Marshall's one-term Liberal government, continuing a tradition of short-lived Liberal governments in South Australia. In the second half of 2022, Peter Malinauskas' new government was seeking to bed down its agenda, and was favoured by political circumstances. Generally, there is a common political cycle between elections. In the first stage, a new government will often spend the first six to twelve months conducting reviews, taking stock, and generally blaming its predecessor for policy failures. The second stage, usually in years 2 to 3, focuses on securing policy wins and ‘delivering’. In the final stage, the attention then turns to the imminent election. For Malinauskas, the key was to hit the ground running, while for the new Liberal opposition leader David Speirs, it was a period of review and reflection upon the election loss.

The most pressing concern for the Malinauskas government was the intersection of two key issues: the latest wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the electoral goal of ‘ending the ramping crisis’. In July, the Omicron strain was “biting harder in South Australia than at any time since COVID-19 reached [SA] shores” (The Advertiser, 29 July 2022). At this time, Chief Health Officer Nicola Spurrier was encouraging South Australians to work from home where possible; but this sat in conflict with the Premier's desire for economic activity to resume, particularly in Adelaide's CBD. The total number of cumulative cases of COVID-19 in July 2022 was over 700,000, and at the peak of July, the number of reported daily cases was at 5,000 per day. After July, there was some respite and a steady decline in reported cases (covid19data.com.au). Data also confirmed that hospitalisations peaked in SA in July (374 cases, 25 July), declined steadily until October (reaching a low of about 30 cases), and then steadily rose again with 255 hospitalisations by the end of the year (covid19data.com.au). Compared with the other states these are relatively small numbers but proportionate to South Australia's population, this was a highly challenging situation.

COVID-19 then placed key strains on already stretched hospital and health resources. Health Minister Chris Picton faced a range of challenges in addressing the issue of ramping – the focal point of the March election. Labor made some headway into reducing the overall ramping levels (ambulances parked or ‘ramped’ outside hospitals), but health systems more generally were under strain. Labor suffered a blow when the Women and Children's Hospital Paediatric Intensive Care Unit lost its accreditation as a training unit (The Advertiser, 2 December 2022) and pressure continued when SA Health's patient records technology went into a “meltdown” (The Advertiser, 29 December 2022). A key stakeholder, the Salaried Medical Officers Association, called for an

Early in the 2022 Australian election campaign, in an address to the Lowy Institute in Sydney, then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison went out of his way to characterise Australia's regional neighbourhood as a geo-strategic theatre brimming with threats from a foreign power. He identified China, which had joined Russia in declaring a “no-limits” partnership shortly before the Ukraine invasion two weeks previously, as the key threat to the peaceful status quo in the region. He highlighted Beijing's expanding militarisation, along with “espionage, disinformation, cyber-attacks, foreign interference, and economic coercion.” Morrison said that China was becoming more assertive “in ways that are causing concern to nations across the region” and underlined that Australia's future was “inextricably linked” with those of the Pacific Island countries (PICs) to Australia's north and east.1

The Pacific is not usually an election focus in Australia — the region generally attracts only limited Australian media coverage. But the coalition government's decision to play the national security card, trumpeting its “Pacific step-up” program,2 combined with the subsequent revelation that Solomon Islands had secretly finalised a security agreement with China on the coalition's watch, was to ensure that the Pacific became a battleground in the struggle to win government. The Labor opposition bought into the prevailing national security narrative, seizing on the Government's discomfort over events in Solomon Islands. Shadow Foreign Minister Penny Wong told the media that “on Scott Morrison's watch, our region has become less secure.”3 Morrison continued to speak about the challenges arising from China's “intense” approaches to the PICs, warning in early April that “these threats still remain.”4 Labor brought forward a substantial new set of Pacific policies mid-campaign, positioning it well for intense, positive diplomatic engagement with the region in the early post-election period, led by Wong as Foreign Minister for the new government.5

The unusual domestic political focus on the Pacific led the mainstream Australian media into unfamiliar territory. With some exceptions, the intensive reporting that ensued in Australian outlets — and much of the accompanying commentary from Australian public figures — reflected little detailed knowledge of the Pacific itself. The region was often made to sound like nothing more than a vacant expanse full of risk, where China was locked in a dangerous contest with the West, led by Australia as its chief representative in the region.6 Little attention was given to the people of the region themselves — the challenges they face, their priorities, and their aspirations.

All this seemed to confirm the sense that Australian public interest in the Pacific is only aroused when other major powers are threatening to move in on our “backyard” — to use a habitual, neo-colonialist term that was redeployed regularly during the cam

This article evaluates the successes and failures of Australian drought and water policy reforms. By analysing the influence of the ideas central to neoliberal economics and countrymindedness on the development and implementation of the National Drought Policy and the Murray Darling Basin Plan, we illustrate that drought and water policy reforms in Australia can be explained in the context of Karl Polanyi's double movement theory. We demonstrate that founding Australia's agricultural policy on economic assumptions is unlikely to be well-received in a nation that exhibits widespread sympathy for the plight of agricultural producers. As such, we postulate that neoliberal agricultural policies that ignore the relevant social and historical context will be unpopular and vulnerable to a countermovement that undermines the intent and hinders the implementation of the policy.