Like many people, I grew up believing Australia was colonised by a small band of people, who had most likely landed on its shores by accident; but research I published this week suggests a far larger founding…
Resource issues dominate Japanese thinking on the Australia-Japan bilateral relationship.
AAP
The Australia-Japan economic relationship is broad, deep, and has an extensive history. However, issues to do with natural resources – minerals, energy and food – loom large in the politics of the contemporary…
Del Kathryn Barton’s Hugo is the 2013 winner.
AAP/Art Gallery of New South Wales
UPDATE: Del Kathryn Barton has won the 2013 Archibald Prize for her portrait of Hugo Weaving.
This is the second time Barton has won the prize, her last winner was in 2008. The only other woman to win…
There’s more to a house than four walls and a door – the history of home ownership in Australia reveals a lot about our nation.
Flickr/Orderinchaos
Next time you drive through a suburban street or any country town shut your eyes for a moment and try to imagine the dreams of the people who built that house. Houses are envelopes for our desires and…
The latest results of international testing in maths, science and reading means Australia’s education outlook does not look good.
Test image from www.shutterstock.com
By Sue Thomson, Australian Council for Educational Research
Prime Minister Julia Gillard in September set an ambitious goal for Australian education: to be ranked as a top-five country in reading, mathematics and science by 2025.
Clearly she is hoping to lift…
Australian Syrians protest in Hyde Park, Sydney, in February calling for the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to step down immediately.
AAP Image/Lauren Farrow
In Syria, the optimism which accompanied the Arab Spring uprising has faded into the reality of a bloody sectarian civil war. Recent media reports have highlighted the involvement of foreign fighters in…
Australia is not starving, but we do have major food distribution issues (and diet-driven health problems).
N Sawyer/Flickr
Last week saw national and international media attention on events unfolding in Parliament House. But another function in that magnificent building was arguably of much greater long-term importance — the…
The OECD report on education shows Australia could be doing more.
Report card image from www.shutterstock.com
The most recent edition of the OECD’s Education at a Glance released this week, is another report that has invariably been seen as a report card on Australian education.
Australians want to know: how…
A shared cricket heritage may do more harm than good.
AAP/Paul Miller
The past decade has seen a large increase in Indian migration to Australia. In 2011-12, 29,018 Indians became permanent migrants, the highest such number from any one country. Fellow democracies with shared…
If the same parts of Australian history are taught over and over again, we shouldn’t be surprised that students lose interest.
Flickr/murphyeppoon
Buried away in the correspondence columns of last week’s Sunday Age, a former history teacher’s letter “Where’s our history?” started an intense and confused debate about a “threat” by the national curriculum…
Argentina, like many other Latin American economies, could learn much from Australia’s economic resilience.
Luis Fdez
In 2009, I launched a book titled Drifting Apart: The Diverging Development Paths of Argentina and Australia, which I co-authored with Fernando Tohmé from Universidad Nacional del Sur in Argentina. We…
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and Julia Gillard are at loggerheads over the investment chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
AAP
This week, San Diego is hosting the latest round of talks over the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Australia and New Zealand are at loggerheads over this secretive new trade treaty spanning the Pacific Rim…
Familiar territory: Australia’s tourism pitch to China was well received, but it could have been more adventurous.
AAP
In a symbolic move, Tourism Australia chose Shanghai to launch its new “There’s Nothing Like Australia” campaign. The classic advertising imagery returns us to the pre-Hogan era, before Paul invited prospective…
If Australia had been founded according to the Eurozone model, our current economic situation would look very different.
adam79
Suppose that in 1901 Australia’s founding fathers had designed the Commonwealth differently. The states were to retain all powers to tax and had to finance themselves (including health, education and social…
David Herbert Lawrence dived deep into the psychology of the Australian landscape in Kangaroo.
Flickr/Duncan~
Welcome to the first essay in our series on how the Australian landscape has been described in literature. We start with an internationally recognised D. H. Lawrence scholar, Christopher Pollnitz, writing…
Who would emerge better under a trans-Tasman currency regime: New Zealand or Australia?
AAP
The idea of a shared currency between Australia and New Zealand is not new and has engendered discussion over the past two decades. It has recently come to the forefront as a result of our Prime Ministers…
The Convergence review’s final recommendations have fallen short when it comes to Australian content.
AAP/Dean Lewins
By Ben Goldsmith, Queensland University of Technology
The Convergence Review Final Report released yesterday appears at first blush to promise major changes to the Australian media landscape.
The report flags the creation of a new communications regulator…
Local history has an important place in Australia. The academic world should get involved.
Flickr/Kate's Photo Diary
Local history is one of the most popular forms of history in Australia. Yet there is a yawning gap between the enthusiastic amateur and the academic historian.
While some academic historians engage with…
The Australian film Any Questions for Ben? has begged another question – what makes a film Australian?
AAP Image/Marianna Massey
What makes an Australian film truly Australian? Do there need to be Aussie characters? Aussie actors? Aussie subject matter? Australian humour?
Australians are good at obsessing about what makes them…
The Diprotodon optatum, a marsupial mega-herbivore sometimes known as the Giant Wombat or the Rhinoceros Wombat, grew to three metres in length and two metres in height. Its closest surviving relatives are the wombat and the koala.
Peter Murray
The first Australians hunted giant kangaroos, rhinoceros-sized marsupials, huge goannas and other megafauna to extinction shortly after arriving in the country more than 40,000 years ago, new research…
Queen Elizabeth II has many supporters. But are they getting value for money?
EPA/Chris Radburn
To some, the Queen and her royal family are dear to the heart.
To others, there is nothing sillier than following the lives of individuals that parade themselves as royalty. And for many – if not most…
How and why has Australia Day become so important?
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
Some 224 years ago on January 26, the First Fleet arrived at Sydney Cove. Just 1500 people disembarked with nearly 800 of them convicts. The date saw the beginning of the British penal colony, then known…
Australia’s demographic make-up is changing rapidly.
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
One of the sharpest divides in attitudes to Australia Day celebrations is between those who think of Australia as a nation of migrants and those who regard Australians as a unique people and culture…
You may want to start hoarding supplies and making your end of world plans now – before it’s too late.
Flickr/Necromundo
If you believe the doomsayers, the human race is not long for this earth. By the end of this year, our number will be up: the four horseman of the apocalypse will be upon us, fire will rain from the skies…
Many Aboriginal people, like boxer Anthony Mundine, look to Islam as a way of re-connecting with their roots.
AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy
Muslim conversion is growing in Indigenous communities.
In the 2001 national census, 641 Indigenous people identified as Muslim. By the 2006 census the number had climbed by more than 60% to 1014 people…
It’s December 15th, 1983. Around 13,000 people, a capacity crowd, are packed into the Sydney Entertainment Centre. This is the last of five Cold Chisel shows there.
Fans had queued for blocks, some had…
2500 US Marines will be deployed near Darwin in coming years, but we could also see an expanded American military presence elsewhere in northern Australia.
AAP/Malone
Negotiations are underway that could see some the US military’s most advanced drone aircraft based on the Australian Indian Ocean territory of the Cocos Islands.
Combined with discussions around having…
The less Australia reaches outwards, the less it will reap the rewards.
Sean MacEntee
Have you used your mobile phone, taken medicine or banked online today? As consumers, we benefit directly from the increasing pace of innovation.
But ten years into the Asian century, the source of innovation…
‘Generation’ is a slippery concept. More research is needed to tell real people’s stories.
Flickr/Mickey van der Stap
Generational difference is one of the major issues of our time. Game shows like Talkin’‘bout Your Generation assume that Baby Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y contestants have very different attitudes and knowledge…
Americans may be a little confused about Australia, but they sure do like us. AAP/Greg Wood.
Americans may not think about Australia much, but when they do, they try not to let facts get in the way. But why should we be surprised by that? With great passion comes great ignorance. And Americans…
Julia Gillard has enjoyed mixing with Barack Obama on the foreign policy stage.
AAP/AusPic Howard Moffat
When President Obama begins his long-awaited visit to Australia today, he’ll have a keen tour guide in Julia Gillard. They’ve developed an apparently firm friendship in recent months. But should the Prime…
Would you be out for a duck in the citizenship test?
Flickr/R@VITH
The Australian citizenship test has just turned four. Its birthday passed without fanfare but this is not surprising.
Soon after its introduction, a Labor government review addressed early concerns that…
The world’s population is racing ahead compared to growth in the rest of the world.
AAP/Dean Lewins
SEVEN BILLION PEOPLE: As the global population passed the seven billion mark yesterday (give or take a few months – the data aren’t exact), Australia’s resident population will reach about 22.75 million…
Julia Gillard could play a pivotal role in ensuring Asia’s security, and improve Australia’s economy in the process.
AFP/Minoru Iwasaki
AUSTRALIA IN ASIA: In the second of our series Nick Bisley of La Trobe University examines the responsibilities Australia must take on to ensure security in Asia.
Asia’s economic powerhouses are booming…
The State premiers and Prime Minister, Julia Gillard meet at the Council of Australian Governments (AAP/Alan Porritt)
There is an old joke in Canada, one that every university student is told early in the Introduction to Politics class. It goes like this: three students – one British, one French, and a Canadian – are…
Party activists may be passionate, but they’re dwindling in number.
AAP/Dean Lewins
Around the western world, political parties have lost their appeal. Membership of major parties has declined dramatically, while our willingness to vote for one party throughout our adult lives has collapsed…
There should be more regulation of third parties to help preserve Australian democracy. AAP/Alan Porritt.
MEDIA & DEMOCRACY: In the latest instalment of The Conversation’s week-long series on how the media influences the way our representatives develop policy, Marian Sawer examines the need to regulate…
Too much regulation of third parties like GetUp! will hurt democracy.
Paul Miller AAP
MEDIA & DEMOCRACY: In the latest instalment of The Conversation’s week-long series on how the media influences the way our representatives develop policy, Andrew Norton says there’s no need to regulate…
Kevin Rudd used to manage his brand well, but was toppled after an advertising campaign against him.
AAP/YouTube
MEDIA & DEMOCRACY: Today, Andrew Hughes looks at how voters have become consumers of political marketing, as part of The Conversation’s week-long series on how the media influences the way our representatives…
Defence policy in Australia will have undergone radical change by 2050.
AAP
AUSTRALIA 2050 – So let’s imagine it’s the midpoint of the 21st century and Australia is enjoying its third decade as a recognised innovator in democracy.
Australia routinely initiates global conversations…
Rob Oakeshott MP tells Professor John Warhurst why he decided to free himself from party constraints.
AAP
For the latest in our In Conversation series, Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University, John Warhurst spoke with the Independent member for the NSW seat of Lyne, Rob…
The Census is useful and important. Governments and policy makers remain dependent upon the information it provides to govern responsibly.
Beyond being a simple count of people and assets, contemporary…
Australian veterans of the Pacific theatre in WWII attend a VJ Day memorial.
AAP
Sometimes an historian will challenge one of the key ideological myths of Australian capitalism.
Henry Reynolds does it in his work on the colonial treatment of Aborigines, a treatment some go so far…
Ben Quilty’s portrait of Margaret Olley won the Archibald Prize this year.
Art Gallery of New South Wales: www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au
Margaret Olley, one of Australia’s best known artists, has died at her home in Sydney. She was 88.
The Conversation asked Christopher Menz, the Acting Director of the Ian Potter Museum of Art at University…
Kim Scott’s tale of early settler relations has been applauded by the literary community.
The Trust Company
Western Australian author Kim Scott won the Miles Franklin Literary Award for the second time last night with his fifth novel, That Deadman Dance.
Described by one judge as “post-reconciliation” fiction…
Australia needs to reassess where it stands on mental health.
Flickr/knicolai
Even a cursory glance at Australia’s mental health system indicates shortcomings in the provision of a range of services to people with mental impairments.
Since 1993, when the Human Rights and Equal…
The funeral of Australian soldier Marcus Case, killed in Afghanistan in June.
AAP
In an interview conducted in Kabul on Monday June 6, perhaps not coincidentally the 67th anniversary of the Normandy D-Day landings, the top US military commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus…
Singer Brian McFadden leads a steady stream of Irish imports.
Sydney in February displayed in full technicolor what is one of the big stories in Ireland – the latest phase of our history of being an emigrant race.
As we walked around the city, stopped for coffee…
