John Warhurst

International versus domestic issues: The elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate

John Howard sought a third term in office for his Liberal-National Coalition Government on 10 November 2001. When he announced the election date five weeks earlier on 5 October he was the overwhelming favourite to win because of the international events of the previous two months, although Kim Beazley's Labor Party had led the Howard Government in the polls for much of the period since the previous election on 3 October 1998. The Opposition had done so despite considerable disquiet within its own ranks over Labor's apparent strategy of not revealing many of its own policies. It seemed to be relying on the unpopularity of the Government's GST to return it to office, and refused to detail its ... read more.
 

Michael Rowland

Myths and Non-Myths: Frontier 'Massacres' in Australian History — The Woppaburra of the Keppel Islands

the laughter and yabber of the Island blacks was not there it had gone never to return I was speaking to one of the Tourist who came from South I told her this was one of the liveliest place on the Australian Coast and was done by the natives of the Island she said the Island was lovely but too lonely I wished the natives would come again.1In writing of conflicts between colonists and Indigenous people on the Australian frontier, Keith Windschuttle and others2 have through media attention focused much of the debate on issues of definition and numbers of people killed. In this paper I refer to the Woppaburra, who originally inhabited Ganumi Bara (the Keppel Islands) of the central Queensland ... read more.
 

Nicole Anae

'The New Prima Donnas': 'Homegrown' Tasmanian 'Stars' of the 1860s Emma and Clelia Howson

Even during the height of his career, Errol Flynn’s reputation was never really overshadowed by his ‘Tasmanian-ness’. In fact, both his reputation and his origins were often integral to his publicity. Around the same era, Merle Oberon’s publicists claimed that the famous actress was Tasmanian-born, specifically, into a wealthy Hobart family. Whether or not this was true, Oberon’s identification as ‘Tasmanian-born’ cast a glowing light on the State’s cultural credibility despite the fact that she lived 10,000 miles away and returned to the island only once, in 1978. Modern-day Tasmanian celebrities encounter a similar emphasis on their State of ... read more.
 

Stephen Alomes

'Colonial' Catastrophe: Football Spectatorship and Local Business / Political Culture in a 'Globalising' Era

In early 2000, a new ‘state of the art’ stadium opened in Melbourne’s Docklands development area.1 Adjacent to Spencer St station and the city, this was a Docklands project which had been realised. ‘Colonial Stadium’, naming rights having been bought by the Colonial financial services company, which cost $450- 60 million to build, was touted as the best thing since sliced electronic chips.2 A few weeks before its opening, I had argued, in unpublished research materials, that it would run into serious problems because of its approach to price and class or category segmentation of the fans. The result of a stadium built by private interests, including News Limited ... read more.
 

Jennifer Curtin and Dennis Woodward

Rural and regional interests: The demise of the rural revolt?

Speculation as to how rural and regional Australians would vote in the 2001 federal election had been rife since 1998. In late 2000, it was reported that there were more "soft voters" in rural and regional Australia, albeit with a very "hard edge" (Grattan 2000). Others labelled these voters "politically promiscuous" (Green 2000). This rural and regional discontent was also apparent at state level. In the 1999 Victorian state election, the Kennett Government lost power largely because of a swing to Independents and the ALP in regional Victoria (Woodward and Costar 2000). In 2001, the West Australian election result provided Labor with the largest number of seats ... read more.
 

Nick Dyrenfurth

Battlers, Refugees and the Republic: John Howard's Language of Citizenship

Despite his recent fourth consecutive election victory, John Howard’s greatest legacy for the position of Australian prime minister is unlikely to be viewed in terms of policy development but, rather, the language with which he addressed and sought to influence Australian society. Howard’s policy interventions, or lack thereof, have been the source of continued academic and polemical writing. However, while critics such as Judith Brett have accurately drawn together the assorted threads and inspiration of his language, much analysis has floated free of institutional circumstances. In this article I will explain and contextualise the importance of his discourse in relation to the ... read more.
 

Sian Supski

'We still mourn that book': Cookbooks, Recipes and Foodmaking Knowledge in 1950s Australia

Lisa Heldke2 suggests that foodmaking is a ‘thoughtful practice’ where practice and theory converge. In contrast to an hierarchical dualistic separation, in which theory is privileged over practice — a separation that has burdened traditional western philosophy — the theory and practice of foodmaking is relational: practice is informed by theory, which is altered through practice. Following Heldke, I contend that foodmaking, as a form of traditional women’s work, is both philosophically significant and meaningful in the ‘everyday’.3 Heldke argues for a theoretical understanding of foodmaking both as a ‘“mentally manual” activity, ... read more.
 

Ivan Krisjansen

Female Asceticism: Press Representations in 1930s South Australia

In the Depression of the 1930s in South Australia women were precluded from a wide range of social and public responsibilities because of established patterns of segmentation which were discernible in a form of liberal governance. The printed press played a substantial role which has been understudied and underestimated in the conventional histories of this period.1 Female embodiment was subject to developing strategies which included the promotion of a patriarchal aesthetic. This aesthetics of existence was encouraged and promoted in the printed press during the 1930s. A kind of social occlusion occurred which encouraged and promoted masculine responsibility while simultaneously encouraging ... read more.
 

John McQuilton

German Australians in Rural Society 1914-1918

In the literature devoted to the home front during the first world war there is a general acceptance that the German Australian had moved from being a model citizen in 1914 to the ‘enemy within’ by 1916. The pressures of war and government propaganda demonised the German Australian, creating an ugly social climate that allowed the suspension of civil rights, encouraged witch hunts and personal scores to be settled using ethnicity as an excuse. Michael McKernan has argued that this was deliberate government policy. 1 Australia was a long way from the battlefields of Europe and the government, to boost the war effort, manufactured an internal threat. The German Australian became ... read more.
 

Marion Maddox

Howard's Methodism: How convenient?!

Analyses of John Howard’s social policy often attribute his social conservatism to personal nostalgia, seeking sources in his schooling, family background and church attendance. For example, recent publications have attributed Howard’s positions on unemployment, industrial relations, multiculturalism, reconciliation and refugees to his childhood Methodism. There are good reasons for skepticism about such accounts, however. This article draws on archival research on 1950s Methodism, both nationally and in the congregation the Howard family attended, to demonstrate that, in instance after instance, Howard’s current social policy positions tend to conflict with the political ... read more.