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Keywords: Australian History

  • AUSTRALIA

    Five years on, did we learn the wrong lessons from Covid?

    • David Hayward
    • 28 March 2025

    Covid offered a rare chance to reimagine the role of the state. What might have become a pivot to care and collective responsibility became a bonanza for entrenched interests. The crisis passed. Inequality returned. And the deeper reckoning that beckoned was quietly deferred, perhaps indefinitely.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why the debate over AFL origins won't go away

    • Jenny Sinclair
    • 28 March 2025

    The origins of Australian Rules Football are officially recorded, but not necessarily complete. As new questions emerge about Tom Wills, marngrook, and the silences in our national story, the game’s history becomes a mirror reflecting not only what we remember, but what we choose to forget.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Cyclone Alfred exposed a health system in disrepair

    • Jo Skinner
    • 25 March 2025

    When Cyclone Alfred swept through Queensland, the damage was swift, but its most enduring effects are harder to see. As the clean-up began, a quieter crisis emerged: disrupted care, rising health risks, and a fragile health system ill-equipped to cope. 

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  • EDUCATION

    Universities are placing limits on protests for student safety

    • Erica Cervini
    • 25 March 2025

    As campus protests grow increasingly disruptive, universities face an uncomfortable choice: uphold students’ right to protest or ensure their safety and right to education. The debate over free speech and campus security has never been more urgent.

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  • EDUCATION

    History matters. So why don't students think so?

    • Erica Cervini
    • 06 March 2025

    Despite public fascination with ancestry, true crime, and historical podcasts surging, formal study of history is in free fall. With university departments shrinking and misinformation rising, historians face an urgent question: how do you persuade students—and the public—that history isn’t just interesting, but essential to understanding the present?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    What makes a writer, and what breaks one

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 28 February 2025

    What makes a writer? Is it exile, loss, or the relentless pull of history? In One Another, Gail Jones traces the lives of two outsiders—Joseph Conrad and a young Australian academic—both adrift between worlds, both seeking meaning in words. A novel about displacement, identity, and the burden of storytelling.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Saving the Reef means learning from its past battles

    • Michele Gierck
    • 28 February 2025

    Dr. Paul Hardisty has spent years chronicling the Great Barrier Reef—not just its breathtaking beauty, but its battles for survival. In In Hot Water, he traces a century of near-misses and looming catastrophe, from oil drilling threats to climate-driven bleaching, revealing the fragile, high-stakes fight to save the world’s largest coral ecosystem.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Whither Europe?

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 27 February 2025

    Europe faces a moment of strategic recalibration as shifting U.S. priorities put transatlantic ties under strain, raising concerns about Europe’s defence  standing. With war on its borders and internal divisions mounting, the European Union must rethink its role in an increasingly uncertain world.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Cheques and (power) balances reshape aid in a post-liberal world

    • Cameron Hill
    • 26 February 2025

    With cuts to USAID, international aid programs confront mounting challenges. Amid evolving power dynamics and strategic realignment, humanitarian assistance now faces fundamental questions about its future.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Criticism or condemnation? The ethics of speech in times of war

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 February 2025

    The shockwaves of the Hamas attack on Israel and the Israeli military’s response in Gaza have ignited protests, inflamed divisions, and prompted a reckoning with rising antisemitism. As hostilities pause, how should societies distinguish between legitimate criticism and rhetoric that fuels hate?

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  • RELIGION

    We need to talk about anti-Judaism resurfacing in the Church

    • Emma Carolan
    • 19 February 2025

    Amidst a rise in antisemitism globally, some in the Jewish community have raised concerns about echoes of historic anti-Judaism resurfacing within the Church. While Catholic leaders condemn overt hate, has the Church fully confronted its entrenched biases, or do old prejudices still affect its response in ways that go unnoticed?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The task of worrying, then and now

    • Gillian Bouras
    • 19 February 2025

    William Cowper’s The Task, written in 1785, echoes today’s anxieties with eerie precision — war, oppression, the weight of the world. Can poetry offer solace in chaotic times? A journey through memory, history, and resilience might hold the answer.

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