From William Chidley to Germaine Greer Australia has spawned more than its fair share of radical thinkers about sex, and Australians have often embraced their ideas, despite persecution by officialdom.
- Director, Vice-Chancellor's Centre of Public Ideas (CoPI) and Donald Horne Professor of History and Public Ideas, University of Canberra
Historically, Australians have been leaders rather than followers on progressing social issues. But more recently, our leaders have trailed behind public opinion.
Donald Horne saw Australia as a lucky country that was squandering its luck. His bold ideas captured the nation’s imagination. But being a public intellectual is no longer easy. Who will come up with the next grand ideas?
Historians may not be the media stars they were in the 1980s, but understanding our history remains vital to understanding ourselves.
By the end of 1992, Paul Keating had done more than anyone to place on the political agenda issues of national identity that had been either dead or dormant for years.
Labor and Bill Shorten are right to be pleased with the number of seats they picked up, but it was still not enough for them to form government – and that is the serious task ahead.
The ‘party discipline’ that has its roots in the Labor Party’s precursor of the 1890s has stifled real political debate, making even the smartest politicians sound like hacks and act like sheep.
Eighties culture is big, from nostalgic TV dramas to tours by ageing pop stars. But it’s time for a clear-eyed assessment of the decade, which prized excess and economic rationalism along with synth pop and big hair.
The recent history of elections in Australia is a varied one, with some spectacular crashes and own goals along the way.
The logic of the policy changes initiated by the Hawke government in mid-1990 has underpinned asylum-seeker policy for much of the quarter-century since.
In the 1980s Australians grappled with the challenges of living in an era that brought together boom and crisis, nationalism and globalisation, confidence and anxiety, and conservatism and exuberance.
There is a complicated story involving the Anzac legend and the left between the 1920s and the 1960s which historians have barely begun to untangle.
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