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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Over our heads: Housing costs & Australian families
Julian Disney
For all our differences the majority of Australians seem to be moving beyond the precept of tolerance towards a higher ideal of acceptance. At a time when people were talking about a “clash of civilizations”, Australia seemed to serve as a stunning reminder to the world that an “alliance of civilizations” was not only possible, but in good working order. The Cronulla race riots, and the ensuing fallout, have only served to undermine that progress.
 
The Australian-Asian Connection: from Alfred Deakin to John Howard
Laksiri Jayasuriya
As we ponder the significance of Australia’s recent entry to the inner sanctum of East Asian Summit, many questions come to mind: does this signify a radical change in Australia’s view of itself? If there has been a change in how we comprehend the Australian-Asian connection, what underlies this sudden embrace of an ‘Asian future’ by John Howard who has previously been forthright in his criticism of the regional policies in the Hawke and Keating era?
 
Our place in the sun
Val Wake
Australian interest in New Caledonia affairs has a long history. It goes back to the days of “blackbirding” when privateers scoured the South Pacific for cheap labour to work in the Australian cane fields. When the United States Fleet weighed anchor in Sydney Harbour in 1908, Billy Hughes saw it as a warning. What was to stop a less friendly power doing the same thing? Hughes warned the fledgling nation that there were 16 foreign naval stations within striking distance of Sydney. Noumea was one of them.
 
Dictators I have known and loved
Rachel Morris
 
Interview with Frank Furedi
Eileen Chanin
Professor of Sociology at University of Kent, and commentator on fear and risk in contemporary society, Furedi’s books include The Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right (2005), Where have all the Intellectuals gone? confronting 21st century philistinism (2004), Therapy Culture (2003), Culture of Fear (2002), and Paranoid Parenting (2001). An outspoken libertarian, he has provoked debate with his views on politics, anti-intellectualism, education, and cultural imagination.
 
Book review: Decision and Deliberation by David Clune and Gareth Griffith
E. Lloyd Sommerland