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More Than Fiscal »
The Intergenerational Report, Sustainability and Public Policy in Australia
Publication date: May 2023
Every five years, the Australian treasurer is required to publish an intergenerational report (IGR), which examines the long-term sustainability of current government policies and seeks to determine how demographic, technological and other structural trends might affect the economy and the budget in coming decades. Despite these lofty objectives, the five IGRs produced from 2002 have received only muted applause. Critics say that they are too mechanical, too narrow and too subject to the views of the government of the day and that they don’t provide the intended wake-up call for public understanding of looming economic, social and environmental issues.
This analysis of the most recent IGR (2021) is based on a workshop hosted by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. While finding that the 2021 IGR is an improvement on the previous report (2015), the authors identify several fiscal and broader policy issues that deserve greater attention, including Australia’s structural deficit, rising inequality and the impacts of climate change. They argue that the report fails to discuss the policies required to support greater resilience against future shocks, including the case for earlier budget repair. They propose that future IGRs be prepared with greater independence, cover all levels of government, have more transparent analysis and draw upon a wider ‘wellbeing’ approach to long-term sustainability.
This book aims to attract close attention from public officials and politicians and generate constructive debate in the community.
Law and the Quest for Gender Equality »
Authored by: Margaret Thornton
Publication date: April 2023
For centuries, law was used to subordinate women and exclude them from the public sphere, so it cannot be expected to become a source of equality instantaneously or without resistance from benchmark men—that is, those who are white, heterosexual, able-bodied and middle class. Equality, furthermore, was attainable only in the public sphere, whereas the private sphere was marked as a site of inequality; a wife, children and servants could never be the equals of the master. Despite their ambivalence about the role of law and its contradictions, women and Others felt that they had no alternative but to look to it as a means of liberation.
This skewed patriarchal heritage, the subtext of this collection of essays, has continued to impede the quest for equality by women and Others. It informs not only gender relations in the private sphere, as illustrated by domestic violence and sexual assault, but also the status of women in the public sphere. Despite the fact that women have entered the paid workforce—including the professions—in large numbers, they are still expected to assume responsibility for the preponderance of society’s caring. The essays show how maternal and caring roles, which are still largely viewed as belonging to an unregulated private sphere, continue to be invoked to detract from the authority of the feminine in the public sphere. The promise of antidiscrimination legislation in overcoming the heritage of the past is also shown to be somewhat hollow.
Something's Gotta Change »
Redefining Collaborative Linguistic Research
Authored by: Lesley Woods
Publication date: March 2023
Indigenous people are pushing back against more than 200 years of colonisation and rejecting being seen by the academy as ‘subjects’ of research.
A quiet revolution is taking place among many Indigenous communities across Australia, a revolution insisting that we have control over our languages and our cultural knowledge – for our languages to be a part of our future, not our past. We are reclaiming our right to determine how linguistic research takes place in our communities and how we want to engage with the academy in the future.
This book is an essential guide for non-Indigenous linguists wanting to engage more deeply with Indigenous communities and form genuinely collaborative research partnerships. It fleshes out and redefines ethical linguistic research and work with Indigenous people and communities, with application beyond linguistics.
By reassessing, from an Indigenous point of view, what it means to ‘save’ an endangered language, Something’s Gotta Change shows how linguistic research can play a positive role in keeping (maintaining) or putting (reclaiming) endangered languages on our tongues.
The Australian Embassy in Tokyo and Australia–Japan Relations »
Edited by: Kate Darian-Smith, David Lowe
Publication date: March 2023
Relations between Australia and Japan have undergone both testing and celebrated times since 1952, when Australia’s ambassadorial representation in Tokyo commenced. Over the years, interactions have deepened beyond mutual trade objectives to encompass economic, defence and strategic interests within the Indo-Pacific region and beyond. This ‘special relationship’ has been characterised by the high volume of people moving between Australia and Japan for education, tourism, business, science and research. Cultural ties, from artists-in-residence to sister-city agreements, have flourished. Australia has supported Japan in times of need, including the aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.
This book shows how the Australian embassy in Tokyo, through its programs and people, has been central to these developments. The embassy’s buildings, its gardens and grounds, and, above all, its occupants—from senior Australian diplomats to locally engaged staff—are the focus of this multidimensional study by former diplomats and expert observers of Australia’s engagement with Japan. Drawing on oral histories, memoirs, and archives, this volume sheds new light on the complexity of Australia’s diplomatic work in Japan, and the role of the embassy in driving high-level negotiations as well as fostering soft‑power influences.
‘With a similar vision for the Indo-Pacific region and a like-minded approach to the challenges facing us, Australia and Japan have become more intimate and more strategic as partners. I am very pleased to see this slice of Australian diplomatic history so well accounted for in this book.’
— Jan Adams AO PSM, Secretary, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; Australia’s Ambassador to Japan, November 2020–June 2022
Lilith: A Feminist History Journal: Number 28 »
Publication date: December 2022
New research in this issue of Lilith includes studies of feminist vegetarian activism in Victorian England; the lives of Japanese businesswomen in North Queensland before 1941; negotiations of gender amongst women combatants in Tigray, Ethiopia; and the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on women. Each of the four research articles draws upon new sources and interpretations that shed light on the varied experiences of women within and beyond Australia, often challenging established norms or assumptions about progress.
In ‘Vegetarians, Vivisection and Violationism’, Ruby Ekkel explores the centrality of vegetarianism to the activities and lived experience of noted Victorian activist Anna Kingsford. Tianna Killoran’s article ‘Sex, soap and silk’ draws on newly accessible sources in moving beyond traditional narratives that characterise Japanese women in interwar North Queensland as impoverished sex workers. In ‘A Soldier and a Woman’, Francesca Baldwin examines how women combatants in Tigray, Ethiopia, negotiated the connections and collisions between soldiering and womanhood during and after the 1974–91 civil war. Petra Brown and Tamara Kayali Browne’s article ‘Relational Autonomy: Addressing the Vulnerabilities of Women in a Global Pandemic’ explores how the individualistic/atomistic model of autonomy in responses to Covid-19 has disproportionately disadvantaged women.
This issue also contains nine short essay responses from experienced gender scholars—including Ann Curthoys, Sharon Crozier-De Rosa, Catherine Kevin, Ann McGrath, Janet Ramsey, Yves Rees, Madeleine C. Seys, Jordana Silverstein, and Zora Simic—to the question ‘What does it mean to do feminism in 2022?’ These essays reveal the political power of feminist history-making, since, as Ann Curthoys argues in her essay, feminist history is itself a form of activism.
Taken together, these research articles and essays, along with the editorial, demonstrate the fallibility of the notion of history being a narrative of linear progress without relevance to our current reality. They urge against political complacency about the Covid-19 pandemic, colonialism or women's oppression as existing only in the past.
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How Government Experts Self-Sabotage »
The Language of the Rebuffed
Authored by: Christiane Gerblinger
Publication date: December 2022
After official policy advice to governments is publicly released, governments are often accused of ignoring or rejecting their experts. Commonly represented as politicisation, this depiction is superficial. Digging deeper, is there something about the official advice itself that makes it easy to ignore?
Instead of lamenting a demise of expertise, Christiane Gerblinger asks: does the expert advice of policy officials feature characteristics that invite its government audience to overlook or misread it? To answer this question, Gerblinger critically examines official policy advice and finds the language of the rebuffed: government experts reluctant to disclose what they know so as to accommodate political circumstances. She argues that this language evades stable meaning and diminishes the democratic right of citizens to scrutinise the work of government.
Human Ecology Review: Volume 27, Number 2 »
Publication date: December 2022
Human Ecology Review 27(2) features contributions from researchers from around the world, including Brazil, the United States, Mexico, Chile, Australia, Uruguay, Spain, and Nigeria. Studies presented include the indigenous Truká people’s knowledge of medicinal plants in Pernambuco, Brazil (Alves et al.); perceptions of Lyme disease risk in New Hampshire, USA (Bolin); social and physical aspects of adolescent sport development (Concha-Viera and Datta Banik); the role of ecopolitics and ecopoetics in promoting environmental concerns about and resistance to oil exploration in Africa (Nwosu); traditional water harvesting and conservation in arid regions of the Canary Islands (Santamarta et al.); feedback-guided analysis of ecotourism and poaching in the Dominican Republic (Taveras Dalmau and Coghlan); motivations for participation in off-grid ecovillages, featuring a case study from Uruguay (Colby and Whitley); and biodiversity protection in Santiago, Chile (Cox and Asún).
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Vietnam Task »
The 5th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment, 1966–67
Authored by: Robert O’Neill
Publication date: November 2022
On 24 May 1966, eight hundred men of the 5th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment, landed at Nui Dat, in Viet Cong territory. For the next 12 months they were faced with the task of restoring peace, civil law and regular commerce to the Vietnamese of Phuoc Tuy province. This book is a detailed record of those months in the monsoon jungles—of the problems that were faced and the solutions that were found.
Captain O’Neill’s position as battalion intelligence officer enabled him to view the war from the standpoint of the battalion as a whole. However, he does not omit description of personal feelings—towards the Viet Cong, the jungle environment and the Vietnamese people, as well as the other Allied forces involved in the war.
Most of the book was written on the spot in Vietnam. On operations or at Battalion Headquarters, Captain O’Neill jotted down details of the war against the Viet Cong, putting the events of each day in order, often in the small hours of the following morning. Thus not only is this a factual account of the 5th Battalion’s activities over the year; it is also a vivid and compelling picture of the war in Vietnam from the soldier’s point of view.
Parliament: A Question of Management »
Authored by: V M (Val) Barrett
Publication date: October 2022
For centuries scholars and practitioners have studied parliament and its potential reform from an institutional perspective. Until now, few authors have addressed in depth the internal relationships among parliamentary actors, their competing beliefs and their influence on parliament’s effectiveness. Parliament is overwhelmingly an agonistic institution, and competition for status, resources, influence and control has pervaded its administration and impeded reform.
Parliaments appear to struggle with the concept of institutional management. The doctrine of exclusive cognisance or sole jurisdiction implies that parliament, and only parliament, should retain control of its internal business and processes. But why is parliament considered to be unique among public institutions, and why do parliaments appear to resist or even defy attempts to manage them more effectively?
At a time when the public is losing confidence in governments, politics and political institutions, parliament’s role as a broker of ideas and a forum for deliberative policymaking is under threat. In an institution where no one has overall authority and direction, staying relevant and managing public expectations present major challenges for its members and administrators.
This book examines parliamentary management in the national parliaments of Australia and the United Kingdom. Without claiming to be a ‘how to’ book, it attempts to provide a relatable account of how parliamentary officials and members of parliament carry out their inherently complex roles and how they might be assisted by contemporary public management approaches.
Designing Social Service Markets »
Risk, Regulation and Rent-Seeking
Publication date: September 2022
Governments of both right and left have been introducing market logics and instruments into Australian social services in recent decades. Their stated goals include reducing costs, increasing service diversity and, in some sectors, empowering consumers. This collection presents a set of original case studies of marketisation in social services as diverse as family day care, refugee settlement, employment services in remote communities, disability support, residential aged care, housing and retirement incomes. Contributors examine how governments have designed these markets, how they work, and their outcomes, with a focus on how risks and benefits are distributed between governments, providers and service users. Their analyses show that inefficiency, low‑quality services and inequitable access are typical problems. Avoiding simplistic explanations that attribute these problems to either a few ‘bad apple’ service providers or an amorphous neoliberalism that is the sum of all negative developments in recent years, the collection demonstrates the diversity of market models and examines how specific market designs make social service provision susceptible to particular problems. The evidence presented in this collection suggests that Australian governments’ market-making policies have produced fragile and fragmented service systems, in which the risks of rent-seeking, resource leakage and regulatory capture are high. Yet the design of social service markets and their implementation are largely under political control. Consequently, if governments choose to work with market instruments, they need to do so differently, working with principles and practices that drive up both quality and equality.