AQ - Australian Quarterly Volume 79 Issue 1

Refugees on Guantanamo Bay. A Blue Print for Australia’s ‘Pacific Solution’?

Azadeh Dastyari

Guantanamo Bay was used as a processing centre for asylum seekers and a camp for HIV positive refugees in the 1990s. The detention of refugees and asylum seekers in the U.S. naval station strongly influenced Australia’s policy of processing asylum seekers on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. Australia’s so called ‘Pacific Solution ’ has more in common with the U.S. policy of detaining ‘enemy combatants’ in Guantanamo Bay than initially meets the eye.

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Why Do I Read Quadrant?
Don Aitkin

Australia has been fortunate in having a lively set of publications in the field of politics and history, and the number and longevity of the publications says something about the extent to which Australians are still serious readers. Any good suburban newsagency today will have a thousand or more titles on display in its magazine area. What is the reason behind the sheer number and variety of these ‘little journals’ in Australia, how do they survive and who are their readers?

 

Le Parc Australien
Val Wake

My wife and I were spending six weeks in the Corbieres, part of the largest wine growing district in France, during the wine harvest. We were staying at Villerouge la Cremade, just south of Lezignan. But there was no getting away from the Australian presence in this Languedoc-Roussillon corner of France. This was also the home of rugby in France and the local L’Independent daily newspaper carried more sport than most Australian dailies and devoted pages to the rugby drama.


The NSW State Election 2007 - The Contest Beneath
Geoffrey Hawker

Campaigning for the NSW state elections begins in February. There is reason to think that the result could have a long-term impact on the membership of the parties and their viability. The leadership of both major parties is delicately poised, and within each new factional alignments may emerge, depending upon the result – win, lose or draw.

 

Walking with Doric and the Gomph
John Best


Book Review: Will Dyson, Australia’s Radical Genius By Ross McMullin
Eileen Chanin


Review Essay: Missing from the Establishment and Elite Reckoning
Tony Smith


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Andrew Mack
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The Cronulla chaos: Five gloomy explanations
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Camden at War
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The making of an academic import
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