Gustavo Frazao/Shutterstock.com
The history of the rubber ‘boom’ reveals why.
One of the paradoxes of wage policy is that ultimately governments are held responsible and blamed for poor results, but governments are but one player in a complex system of wage adjustment.
Lukas Coch/AAP
History tells us governments do not always get what they wish for, and in fact often perverse outcomes flow from policy choices.
More than 40 years ago professor Ronald Henderson floated the idea of a guaranteed minimum income.
Dean Lewins/AAP
We increasingly celebrate entrepreneurial self-reliance, but for disadvantaged people, the certainty of an adequate income is a fundamental foundation. It may not be sufficient, but it is necessary.
An ex-8th Division prisoner of war is reunited with his family at Ingleburn POW reception camp in New South Wales, November 1945.
Ernest McQuillan/Australian War Memorial
Over 20,000 former POWs returned to Australia at the end of the second world war. Archival research sheds light on those who struggled to readjust to life here - and the impact on their wives.
Petr Jilek via Shutterstock
When it was discovered that citrus fruits could be used to treat scurvy, suddenly Sicilian lemons were very valuable. Enter the mafia.
Emmeline, Christabel and Sylvia Pankhurst: a family at war with itself.
Imperial War Museum/Wikipedia
Sylvia Pankhurst’s book is the dominant narrative of the time, but was she unfair to her sister Christabel?
Is the observation that the standard of living stagnated until 1820 reliable?
Uroš Jovičić/Unsplash
Despite the technological advances that humanity has known for millennia, the standard of living did not begin to rise until around 1800.
Shutterstock
“Critique of Black Reason” offers readers insight into how the construction of race and racism underpins our understanding of modernity.
Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman speaks at the sentencing hearing for Larry Nassar.
Reuters/Brendan McDermid
Laws like Title IX are supposed to shield athletes from abuse. But lax enforcement allows sports organizations to protect perpetrators over athletes.
An Afghanistan national police officer helps a U.S. Army lieutenant, June 14, 2007. Can honour be restored in today’s international conflicts?
Michael Bracken/US Army/Flickr
Nothing displays the ethical superiority of one’s values better than to treat a foe with the respect due another human being.
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics
Desire haunts every sun-drenched frame of the Oscar-nominated film starring Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer.
A woman holding a Roma flag, at a protest in Lety, Czech Republic, the site of World War II Romani genocide.
Martin Divisek/EPA
Racist stigmatisation of Roma as socially ‘unadaptable’ has a long history across Europe.
A painting by Sakubei Yamamoto.
Yamamoto Family/Collection Yamamoto Sakubee
Throughout the centuries, a number of coal miners have documented their lives with paintings. Some of their works are now in museums and bring the stories of the “pitmen” back to life.
It is commonly thought that anyone in ancient Rome who killed his father, mother, or another relative was subjected to the ‘punishment of the sack’. But is this true?
Creative Commons
From being thrown off a cliff to being sewn into a sack with animals, ancient Rome is notorious for its cruel and unusual punishments. But we must be careful what we take as historical fact.
Ron Eland, at far left, in Great Britain’s 1948 Olympic team. The stories of Eland and other black athletes must be told.
Pic taken from Haliday, J. (1950). Olympic Weight-lifting with Body Building for all. London: Pullum & Sons
Writing and rewriting black sporting history is a means of redressing exclusion.
Shutterstock
Fitbits and other trackers are just the latest iteration of the fitness industry’s relationship with technology.
Swan River Colony.
Jane Eliza, Currie Panorama of the Swan River Settlement via Wikimedia Commons
A century and a half after the last convict ship docked in Australia, new research is uncovering what happened to those who were transported.
The 1994 Employment Minister Simon Crean even had to be briefed by officials on the content of the policy when Working Nation was released.
Julian Smith/AAP
Cabinet papers released today by the National Archives show Working Nation began as a rational exercise but was soon overtaken by a desire to make the policy everything to everyone.
The nativity scenes celebrated each Christmas bear little resemblance to history.
skepticalview/Flickr
The inn, the shepherds, angels and animals: pretty much everything we think we know about the Christmas story is historically wrong.
PA Archive
If Labour was such a disaster during this decade, how come so many of its then policies are now maintstream thinking?