In the 1980s Australians grappled with the challenges of living in an era that brought together boom and crisis, nationalism and globalisation, confidence and anxiety, and conservatism and exuberance.
What distinguishes Australia is the extraordinary extent to which people of different cultural backgrounds work, play and form families together.
AAP
The story of Australia’s multicultural future needs to be informed by an understanding of the past. Those who do not know history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them.
Did the Roman arenas of political conflict support the common good?
Trey Ratcliff/flickr
History offers countless examples of social change that is now consolidated and popularly supported, but which was only achieved through protests that were judged at the time to be extreme.
The 1975 crisis surrounding the dismissal of the Whitlam government was brought about in part by the nature of Australia’s constitutional arrangements.
NLA
The way in which Bob Wilesmith’s footage has come to dominate Australians’ recollection of The Dismissal is a story of prescience, luck and the limitations of the TV news technology of the day.
Gough Whitlam, pictured here in 2008, looks at the original letter that dismissed him from office in 1975.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Sir John Kerr probably made his own decision to dismiss the Whitlam government much earlier than he acknowledged publicly while alive – but he came to this conclusion in discussion with others.
New insights into the dismissal of Gough Whitlam highlight the lingering complexities of any future effort to make Australia a republic.
NAA
In comments reported in a new book to mark the 40th anniversary of the dismissal of Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott offer sharply differing views.
Neville Wran, New South Wales premier from 1976 to 1986, was Australia’s first modern leader, building and using ‘political capital’.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
Faction Man is a product of Black Inc. From their perspective, Bill Shorten – and his fascination with grimy Labor machine politics – is an alien figure.
Malcolm Turnbull is promising a change in leadership style from Tony Abbott, but that alone won’t be enough to qualify as government for the 21st century.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
The Abbott government resisted the disruptive changes of the 21st century. To succeed, the Turnbull government will need to shed this reactionary mindset and embrace inevitable change.
Niccolo Machiavelli recognised the absolute importance of dealing with necessity – what we know today as ‘reform’.
Santi di Tito
Since 2007 Australia has not really had prime ministers of sufficient calibre. Instead, we have had an incessant struggle for power by those who believed they had the goods.
Many features of Australians’ and their government’s current response to the Syrian refugee crisis are familiar.
Reuters/Alkis Konstantinidis
We need to see Australia’s response to the Syrian refugee crisis in perspective – in relation to what’s been done elsewhere and to what Australia has done on similar occasions in the past.
Australia’s traditional reliance on multilateralism and alliances won’t be enough to negotiate the geopolitical rivalries of the Asian century.
EPA/Barbara Walton
For the past two centuries, Australia got many of the big calls on global engagement right. In our third century, there are worrying signs that we have not fully grasped what the rise of Asia means.
The Australian Border Force’s creation was no simple re-shuffling of departmental units.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Every generation in the last 150 years has seen in Australia a contest over marriage which reflects shifting positions on its defining features, and its associated rights and obligations.
B.A. Santamaria (left) is the subject of a new biography by political commentator Gerard Henderson.
Wikimedia Commons
Gerard Henderson has produced a rounded and at times fascinating portrait of B. A. Santamaria. His broad conclusion is that Santamaria was a compelling, skilled and persuasive man who was enormously devoted to his causes.
NSW Labor leader Luke Foley moved a motion for Labor to review its ‘socialist objective’, which dates back to 1921.
AAP/Tracey Nearmy
Given that retaining the socialist objective hasn’t prevented the ALP from developing pro-market policies, why is it still seen as such a significant issue?