Keywords: Australian History
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AUSTRALIA
Immunisation has protected communities for centuries, from early smallpox prevention in 200 BC to the eradication of deadly diseases. Yet today, vaccine confidence is slipping. Misinformation, social media, and shifting parental anxieties are fuelling a quiet backlash, raising urgent questions about trust and public health in a changing world.
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AUSTRALIA
- 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
- 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
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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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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