 |
 |
NEW IN APRIL |
|
| |
2020
Summit: Meetings in the Foothills Lyn Carson
The 2020 Summit was primarily a gathering
of experts. What might it have looked like if participants
had been randomly selected from the Australian population,
to create a truly representative ‘mini-public’?
A more diverse group, certainly, and very likely wilder ideas
and greater community confidence in the output …
Industrial Relations
Regime Change in Britain and Australia Rae Cooper
For many observers, Margaret Thatcher’s
industrial relations policy was the apotheosis of state anti-unionism.
So why did the British labour movement, apparently so well-organised
and robust, succumb so quickly and comprehensively to the
efforts of Thatcher and her successors? And how might solving
this puzzle help us to understand the past—and think
about the future—of industrial relations and unionism
in Australia?
What Happened to South
Africa’s Transformation? Eric Louw
In April 1994 Nelson Mandela, as leader
of the African National Congress, became South Africa’s
first black president. Along with the fall of the Berlin
Wall, Mandela’s inauguration was widely hailed as a
defining moment of the 20th century. Yet today, most black
South Africans remain poor—and are becoming restive,
as they wonder when the ANC’s promise of ‘a better
life’ will happen. To understand why their lives haven’t
improved, we need to understand Mbeki’s rise to power.
Neoliberalism and Indigenous
Affairs Mark Moran
Residents of remote Indigenous settlements
experience living standards and institutional arrangements
that resemble those in less developed countries in many ways.
Many policies to which these communities are subject also
resemble those carried out to aid ‘development’ internationally.
A new book about neoliberalism in international development
sheds much light, then, on contemporary developments in Indigenous
policy.
|
|
|
|
Relationships of Ownership,
They Whisper in the Wings … Stewart Clegg (Mar
2008)
Business schools are in crisis. They are
deeply implicated in the worst excesses of contemporary approaches
to business; they are insecure about ethics, and they often lack
professional purpose. They never achieved their early aim of a
professional vocation and, when the world of the organisation man
slowly crumbled in the 1980s, what was left was an ethos of managerialism
premised on measurement. Is there a way forward?
Labor’s
New Upper Class Welfare—The First Home Savers Account Ben
Spies Butcher and Adam Stebbing (Mar
2008)
Imagine a new Labor Government, fresh from
winning an historic election on the basis of defending collective
bargaining. It identifies the core concerns of working families—job
security, petrol prices, grocery prices, and housing affordability.
Then it announces a new welfare payment where those earning over
$180,000 per year will receive twice as much as those on average
weekly earnings. How did we come to this pass?
Suspicious Death: The Thankless
Role of the Medical Examiner Tess Crawley (Mar
2008)
What makes certain deaths ‘suspicious’ and
how are decisions made about the circumstances leading to those
deaths? It is the typically thankless job of medical examiners
to answer these questions. They can tell us the how, the where
and the when. But the ‘why now’ for those unfortunate
enough to come under the jurisdiction of medical examiners tends
to remain part of the Great Mystery.
Rudd’s Apology: The
Letter, the Spirit, and the Future Tony Smith (Mar
2008)
Australia’s Indigenous peoples are
not sticklers for the letter of the law. They have always emphasised
the spirit that lies behind their customs and traditions. They
have found it difficult to deal with the English invaders who have
exploited the distinction between written, black letter law and
oral, spiritual lore. The Prime Minister’s apology to Australia’s
Indigenous peoples had both letter and spirit. But will it stimulate
a positive period in race relations?
Election 2007:
Did the Union Campaign Succeed? Ben Spies-Butcher and Shaun
Wilson (Feb 2008)
The 2007 election was only the sixth bringing
a change of government since World War Two. It was also only the
second time in Australian history that a prime minister lost his
own seat. Interestingly, on both occasions the incumbent government
was challenging the pillars of Australia’s industrial relations
system. So did Workchoices cause John Howard’s downfall?
The Critical Imperative in
Religion Rachael Kohn (Feb 2008)
The open critique, dialogue and reworking
of a tradition, essential to the relevance of Judaism and Christianity
to the modern world, awaits its day in Islam. Even the establishment
of government-funded Islamic studies centres in Australian universities
is no guarantee that this area of study will be free from the apologetic
stocks in trade of Christian divinity schools. Perhaps the three ‘religions
of the book’ don’t have quite so much in common …
Playing Golf? Finding Better
Paths to Pay Equality Leanne Cutcher (Feb
2008)
Tracy earned $US200,000 in 1999, yet she
is a victim of pay inequity. That might seem implausible, even
offensive. But consider the fact that her colleague Roger, who
had identical qualifications and equivalent industry experience,
earned $US600,000 in the same year. Why did Roger earn three times
more than Tracy?
Pushing Drugs: Global Profits
and Local Markets in the Pharmaceutical Industry David Neil (Feb
2008)
Drug companies expend huge sums finding
dubious new diseases for the wealthy, in order to sell more product.
Meanwhile, what is probably the worst plague in human history ravages
entire countries virtually unchecked because a $40 per month treatment
regimen is beyond the reach of most victims. It seems clear that
medical science and money don’t mix well …
Think Tanks and Public Policy Damien
Cahill (Feb 2008)
Think tanks are an established feature of
the Australian political landscape. Their influence was evident
in some key debates during Australia’s recent federal election.
So what kinds of organisations are they? Some scholars are confident
that think tanks have emerged in liberal societies as an efficient
way to present a menu of independently devised policy options to
busy ministers and bureaucrats. Others are not so sure ...
The Pirate’s Code
of Psychoanalysis: Moral Rules or Merely Guidelines? Doris
McIlwain (Dec 2007)
‘If you take a sonovabitch and give
him psychoanalysis, you don’t get a good citizen; you get
a sonovabitch—with analysis’ said Lacanian analyst
Oscar Zentner in 1985, wittily disabusing his listeners of any
expectation that psychoanalysis promotes fitting in with everyday
conceptions of morality. Psychoanalysis has an uneasy relationship
to morality …
The Odd Angry Word: Australia’s
Military Involvement in Vietnam Tony Smith (Dec
2007)
Three more books on Australia’s Vietnam
experience show why the period was exceptional. But they also contain
some more universal lessons about war: that political problems
cannot be addressed using military force, that politicians are
liable to exploit the military, that patriotism cannot be enforced
with legislation, and that an enterprise which promotes killing
inevitably leaves deep, unhealable scars. No amount of rational
analysis can remove the horror from a phenomenon that is, essentially,
a malaise that lingers from our pre-democratic past.
The Calculus of Cat and
Mouse Mark Colyvan (Dec 2007)
What do submarine attacks, ant-trails, and
dating have in common? Not much, except that they are all instances
of pursuit and evasion problems and all submit to elegant mathematical
treatments. The mathematics involved in such problems is varied
and interesting in its own right. But the applications breathe
life into the mathematics and invite wider engagement—as
the intense interest of the military in such problems, especially
during wartime, demonstrates.
How the Chinese became Australians Christina
Ho (Nov 2007)
Politicians often use the discourse of ‘Australian
values’ to question whether some minority groups can integrate
into Australian society. The White Australia Policy, the boldest
and most exclusionary articulation of ‘Australianness’,
was a response to anxieties over the presence of Chinese and Pacific
Islanders in the colonies. It restricted non-White immigration
to Australia until its official abolition in 1973. But many Chinese
remained in Australia. How did they fare and where did they fit?
|
