Debate In Australia Research Articles

Moyes, Menzies, and the Vietnam War: New Insights Into the Public Correspondence Between the Prime Minister and the Bishops

In March 1965 a group of Anglican bishops signed an open letter to the prime minister of Australia, Sir Robert Menzies, expressing its concerns about the rapid deterioration of the situation in Vietnam. The letter had been composed by the retired Bishop of Armidale, John Stoward Moyes. The bishops urged Menzies to use his influence with the United States Government to ensure that the possibility of a negotiated settlement of the conflict could be explored to the full. The letter, and the prime minister's public response, thrust John Moyes and his episcopal co‐signatories into the centre of a national debate on Vietnam. Following Menzies's brusque reply, Moyes composed a second and more critical open letter. The prime minister then issued a more detailed response one week before he committed Australian combat troops to the Vietnam War. The initiative taken by Bishop Moyes constituted the first major instance of public debate in Australia concerning the wisdom and morality of the government's policy on Vietnam.

Replicating ‘A Model of Mutual Respect’: Could Singapore’s Legal Pluralism Work in Australia?

Like other western nations with a Muslim minority, Australia too is debating the extent to which our government should recognize and make concessions to our small but growing Muslim population. In 2011, the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils made a submission to the government entitled ‘Embracing Australian Values – Maintaining the Right to be Different’, which advocated legal pluralism as the right of all Australians. It argued amongst other things that conflicts, especially ones involving family and inheritance matters, should be resolved according to the law and traditions of one's own religion. This was contentious in a nation where ‘one law for all’ has been the accepted approach for two centuries. It did however give rise to a debate on whether the nation can, or should, formally recognize certain aspects of Islamic law or support the establishment of a Syariah Court or tribunal. One of the models for legal pluralism often advocated is that of Singapore. Like Australia, Singapore has a minority Muslim population and also inherited the common law system during the era of British colonisation. This paper reflects on the pluralism debate in Australia and assesses the strengths and weaknesses of Singapore’s plural model to determine whether it could, or should, be replicated ‘down under’.

Jumping to Conclusions? Media Coverage of Jumps Racing Debates in Australia

Abstract Should jumps racing be banned? This paper examines print media coverage of the future of “jumps racing” in 21 Australian newspapers between February 2008 and December 2009, a period of intense debate over its future due to high-profile incidents of horse deaths, campaigning by animal activists, and increased media coverage. In November 2009, Racing Victoria Limited banned jumps racing following the 2010 season but later opened the possibility of jumps racing in 2011 and beyond. The research finds that there is significant variation in support for, and opposition to, jumps racing in different newspapers; that there is sometimes a discrepancy between the perspectives of articles and letters on this issue; and the importance of jumps racing to particular small cities is reflected in the media coverage. While recent events and mounting public pressure may eventually contribute to the demise of steeplechasing and hurdling in Victoria, the termination of horse racing is not a foregone conclusion.

"Keeping It Real": Representations of Postnatal Bodies and Opportunities for Resistance and Transformation

Contrary to popular understandings of academia, the work of academics is intrinsically community driven, because scholarly inquiry is invariably about social life. Therefore, what occupies academic scholarship is in the interest of the broader populace, and we rely on the public to inform our work. The findings of academic work are simultaneously a reflection of the researcher, and the public. The research interests of contemporary cultural and social researchers inevitably, and often necessarily, reflect issues and activities that they encounter in their everyday lives...

Using buzzwords of belonging: everyday multiculturalism and social capital in Australia

This paper examines the concepts of multiculturalism and social capital, their relationship with each other and how these concepts are utilised by different interested parties in Australia. In the context of the United States of America and the United Kingdom, some commentators and scholars have argued that multiculturalism can have a negative impact on the fostering of social capital. These arguments are described before examining the same debate in Australia. However, the emphasis of this article is its description of how ethnic minorities and migrants on the one hand, and community organisations that assist these groups on the other, make use of the notions of multiculturalism and social capital to either legitimise their place in Australia or to effectively advocate for the social and economic utility of investing in programs that address problems faced by these groups. With data gathered through interviews and ethnographic fieldwork in Melbourne and Sydney, the authors demonstrate how the debates that scholars and commentators engage in are sidestepped by migrants and by those who seek to assist them and how they use these concepts in a positive manner and in a way in which no other concepts can be used with the same efficacy.

Bringing Scholarship and Judgement into the Australian Population Debate

Video Abstract: http://bit.ly/ocGEkd

Geography and Population in Australia: A Historical Perspective

AbstractIn contemporary Australia concerns about the future population have seen the creation of a federal ministry on population for the first time. One of the unique dimensions of the population (and immigration) debate in Australia compared with North America and Europe is a strong concern with the environmental implications of growth. The discourse around these issues has been strong in Australia from the colonial period and in the last century geographers have been among the social and physical scientists who have not only provided an empirical basis for the discussion but have been significant protagonists in the debate. This paper surveys the debates around Australia's population since the early years of European settlement and discusses the involvement of geographers. It argues that there is a great deal of continuity in the population debate and that it is important that the lessons of their history inform the contemporary discussion. There is both the need and opportunity for Australia to develop a coherent, holistic, sustainable population policy. It is important that contemporary geographers emulate their forebears and add their knowledge and expertise to the national discussion.

The impact of compulsory cycle helmet legislation on cyclist head injuries in New South Wales, Australia

The study aimed to assess the effect of compulsory cycle helmet legislation on cyclist head injuries given the ongoing debate in Australia as to the efficacy of this measure at a population level. We used hospital admissions data from New South Wales, Australia, from a 36 month period centred at the time legislation came into effect. Negative binomial regression of hospital admission counts of head and limb injuries to cyclists were performed to identify differential changes in head and limb injury rates at the time of legislation. Interaction terms were included to allow different trends between injury types and pre- and post-law time periods. To avoid the issue of lack of cyclist exposure data, we assumed equal exposures between head and limb injuries which allowed an arbitrary proxy exposure to be used in the model. As a comparison, analyses were also performed for pedestrian data to identify which of the observed effects were specific to cyclists. In general, the models identified a decreasing trend in injury rates prior to legislation, an increasing trend thereafter and a drop in rates at the time legislation was enacted, all of which were thought to represent background effects in transport safety. Head injury rates decreased significantly more than limb injury rates at the time of legislation among cyclists but not among pedestrians. This additional benefit was attributed to compulsory helmet legislation. Despite numerous data limitations, we identified evidence of a positive effect of compulsory cycle helmet legislation on cyclist head injuries at a population level such that repealing the law cannot be justified.

What do journalists think about end-of-life care and advance care planning? A media insider's account of reporting from the front line of the end-of-life care debate in Australia

Australia has a unique history in its experience with end of life care. It was the first place in the world to – briefly- legalise euthanasia. But there has been...

From small holes to grand narratives: The impact of taphonomy and sample size on the modernity debate in Australia and New Guinea

Our knowledge of early Australasian societies has significantly expanded in recent decades with more than 220 Pleistocene sites reported from a range of environmental zones and depositional contexts. The uniqueness of this dataset has played an increasingly important role in global debates about the origins and expression of complex behaviour among early modern human populations. Nevertheless, discussions of Pleistocene behaviour and cultural innovation are yet to adequately consider the effects of taphonomy and archaeological sampling on the nature and representativeness of the record. Here, we investigate the effects of preservation and sampling on the archaeological record of Sahul, and explore the implications for understanding early cultural diversity and complexity. We find no evidence to support the view that Pleistocene populations of Sahul lacked cognitive modernity or cultural complexity. Instead, we argue that differences in the nature of early modern human populations across the globe were more likely the consequence of differences in population size and density, interaction and historical contingency.

Trends in food advertising to children on free‐to‐air television in Australia

The issue of marketing unhealthy food to children and its contribution to childhood obesity has become a highly politicised debate in Australia. The aim of this study was to compare recent television food advertising patterns in 2008 to previously published Australian research on television advertising from 2006 and 2007, to examine any changes following policy debates. Television broadcasting was recorded for two weekdays and two weekend days between 6:00 and 22:00 in February 2008 for all three commercial television channels. Food advertisements were classified as core/healthy, non-core/unhealthy or miscellaneous. Television audience data were obtained to determine broadcast periods corresponding to children's peak viewing times. The overall rate of food advertising decreased over time: from seven food advertisements/hour/channel in 2006/07 to five in 2008. However, the relative contribution of non-core food advertising to overall food advertising remained stable. In 2008, the proportion of food advertisements for non-core foods was significantly higher during children's peak viewing times (p<0.01). Australian children remain exposed to a disproportionate volume of television advertisements for unhealthy foods on commercial television, which are shown during time periods when the highest numbers of children are watching. Regulations to limit unhealthy food advertising during the time periods when a significant number of children are watching are required.

Entrapping Christian and Muslim Arabs in Racial Cartoons in Australia: The Other Anti-Semitism

Racial Cartoons are a powerful force disguised as entertainment operating to shape public opinion. During the 1980s, 1990s and after 9/11 in 2001, cartoons in the Australian press were particularly directed against Muslim and Christian Arabs without remorse or fear of redress or accountability. The offensive of such cartoons has essentially been directed on three fronts—oil, politics and religion. The drawback resulting from socio-cultural, historical and other differences are no doubt visible; but equally obvious is that anti-Semitism, which was directed against the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, is today mostly directed against the public relations deprived, opinion silenced and undemocratically governed, ethnically diverse Arabs. It is argued in this paper that several forces were behind such distorted visual strategies adopted by the Australian press. Pre-judgement stemming from an inbuilt bias of the cartoonist, or highlighting characteristics which conform to the national interest are likely factors. The debate in Australia as to whether public images and attitudes of a minority “cause” or “determine” policy or whether policy itself changes attitudes is still resting with the jury.

Towards a Model Public Sector Integrity Commission

This article examines the current debate in Australia about public sector integrity and the idea of a standing anticorruption commission. From this debate the article outlines a specific type of ‘public sector integrity commission’ that in principle should have the necessary powers and techniques at its disposal to minimise corruption while ensuring efficiency and fairness. The debate has been most active in jurisdictions that have not had an anticorruption commission – mainly in Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania – but debate about integrity commissions has occurred in all jurisdictions. The authors argue that anticorruption commissions are essential to ensure the integrity of the public sector and that a model commission should: cover all elements of the public sector; independently investigate serious and mid-level complaints; have own motion powers to investigate any matter; have summary authority to apply administrative sanctions; make use of a range of investigative tools; not be tasked with combating major and organised crime; and be held accountable to citizens through a parliamentary committee and a parliamentary inspector.

‘She’ll be right, mate’: multiculturalism and the culture of benign neglect

‘Multiculturalism', writes Pnina Werbner, is ‘an important rhetoric and an impossible practice'. Tracing the rhetoric surrounding the term multiculturalism in recent political debate in Australia, this article examines the relationship between rhetoric and practice, and between different meanings of multiculturalism as they have evolved over the last decades, particularly in the climate of ‘backlash' during the Howard government.

‘Door Bitches of Club Feminism’?: Academia and Feminist Competency

‘Feminist competency’ is a nascent term that has been identified in three general critiques of contemporary feminism that emerged in the course of research for The Great Feminist Denial (2008), a book on feminist debates in Australia that I co-authored with Monica Dux. The first critique highlights the importance of feminist knowledge, typically generated through the academy, to feminist identification. The second posits a perceived lack of feminist competency as an obstacle to feminist affiliation. The third assessment insists that spokespeople for feminism should be sufficiently competent. Using these responses to feminism as a starting point, combined with a reflection on my own framing as an academic feminist in the public sphere, I make a case for the potential value of ‘feminist competency’ as a means to assess the impact of academic feminism, in Australia and elsewhere.

Measuring Housing Stress: How Much do Definitions Matter?

There has been extensive debate in Australia in recent years about the most appropriate measure of housing stress. This article presents estimates of housing stress in Australia and examines the comparative effects of various definitions on the proportion of households in housing stress. Six measures of housing stress are tested, all with different types of income and criteria. Up-to-date estimates of housing stress at the national and state/territory level are produced from the 2005–2006 Survey of Income and Housing from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. These estimates are then compared to identify the least sensitive indicator of housing stress across household tenure type.

Labour Market Dynamics in Australia: What Drives Unemployment?*

The debate in Australia on the (constant‐output) elasticity of labour demand with respect to wages has wrongly sidelined the role of capital stock as a determinant of employment (Webster, 2003). As far back as 1991, Pissarides had argued that the influence of capital stock on the performance of the labour market is crucial but not well understood, a research area which is particularly relevant for Australia. This article attempts to fill this void by estimating a multi‐equation labour market model comprising labour demand, wage setting and labour supply equations. The model is used to examine the causes of the unemployment upturn in 1973–1983 and the subsequent decline in 1993–2006. Our results show that (i) the main determinants of the unemployment rise in the 1970s and early 1980s were wage‐push factors, the two oil price shocks and the increase in interest rates, and (ii) the acceleration in capital accumulation was the crucial driving force of unemployment in the 1990s and 2000s. Furthermore, although the recent boom in the terms of trade is equally important, its downward effect on unemployment was partially reversed by the resulting decrease in net foreign demand.

Too Much? Too Young? The Sexualisation of Children Debate in Australia

This article considers the origins and focus of current Australian debates around the alleged ‘sexualisation’ of children and young people. It explores the popular discourses around youth and sexuality and unpacks the assumptions and contradictions that underwrite them, by addressing the terms of reference of the Australian Senate's 2008 Sexualisation of Children in the Contemporary Media Inquiry. The article concludes by outlining some proposed public policy solutions to addressing current community concerns that children and teenagers are being inappropriately sexualised.

Commemorating Foundation: A Study in Regional Historical Memory

There has been much debate in Australia about the national historical memory of British settlement and its counterpart of Aboriginal dispossession, but what do we see when this historical memory is examined not on the national but on the regional scale? This paper examines some of the changing forums for commemorating the foundation of South Australia, the Australian colony that has always regarded itself as distinctive in its protection of Aboriginal people as British subjects. In doing so we trace how and in what forms the history of the contested frontier has maintained different levels of visibility at different times, and what this might suggest about the politics of historical representation.This article has been peer-reviewed.

Classroom Crucifixes, Teacher Headscarves, Faith Healers and More - The German Experience of Religious Freedom Under a Bill of Rights

As part of the current debate in Australia on the adoption of a bill or charter of rights, the experience of other countries is informative. The German Constitution contains a comprehensive catalogue of rights and freedoms. This includes principles protecting religious freedom, most importantly article 4, which declares ‘inviolable’ the ‘freedom of faith, of conscience, and freedom to profess a religion or a particular philosophy’. It also guarantees the ‘undisturbed practice of religion’. Should Australia opt to adopt a charter of rights in any form, it is highly likely that this instrument will contain some protection of cultural and religious freedom. While initially an Australian charter would not be constitutionally entrenched, a comparison with Germany is still helpful because it can be expected that issues encountered under a constitutional charter also arise under a legislative one. The German experience provides examples of the type of social controversies which the courts are called on to decide in relation to the protection of religious freedom. Issues encountered in Germany seem to belong to two broad categories: first, which kind of behaviour falls within the ambit of freedom of religion and, secondly, to what degree can religious freedom be limited. In relation to the first category, it appears uncontroversial that practices such as praying, conducting Sunday service or ringing of church bells constitute religious behaviour. But what about announcing a charitable drive to collect second hand goods from the pulpit; selling food or drink at religious meetings or refusing to bury an urn in a cemetery? In relation to the second category, even if a type of behaviour is found to be within the definition of freedom of belief, there must be limitations to this freedom. But where should the line be drawn? In the last few decades, the German Constitutional Court was called upon to rule on controversies where one party’s freedom to exercise his or her religion infringed another party’s freedom not to be exposed to religion or religious practices. Many of these occurred within the educational system. Famous examples are the School Prayer Case, where a student’s parents objected to their child’s exposure to school prayer outside of religious education; the Classroom Crucifix Case, where non-Christian parents objected to their child being exposed to crucifixes in classrooms of a public, non-religious school; and the Teacher Headscarf Case where the Court was asked to decide whether an Islamic teacher is entitled to wear a headscarf while teaching in a public school, thus exposing students to a manifestation of her faith. All of these cases saw the Constitutional Court become involved in morally highly controversial disputes, which received a lot of attention from the public and where public opinion was clearly divided. This paper will explain the course which the Court took in resolving these disputes. It will argue that a clause protecting freedom of belief in a charter of rights inevitably involves the courts in disputes which are morally difficult, highly controversial and the subject of much public debate. However, in my view, this is a small price to pay for providing protection of the public’s religious beliefs in a charter of rights.