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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Neville Wran at (almost) 80: Interview with The Hon. Neville K. Wran AC QC
Troy Bramston
Thirty years ago Neville Wran led NSW Labor to victory. Showing Labor how to govern for the modern era, he centralised policy and politics into his orbit, pioneered ‘continuous campaigning’ and was a superb media performer. His approval rating was once 80 per cent and he won four elections including two landslides. No state leader has matched this since.
This frank and expansive interview offers new insights into his philosophy and motivations, his government and Labor’s challenges today.
 
The Liberal party in New South Wales: Kick-starting the Machine?
Geoffrey Hawker
 
Work Choices: It’s like deja-vu all over again
Shona Zulsdorf
The industrial landscape under WorkChoices will be familiar to those West Australians who survived the workplace agreements system that operated from 1993 to 2002. There are as many similarities between the two systems as there are in the rhetoric of the respective Ministers in selling the virtues of a more deregulated labour market. What can be learnt by examining the WA experience and the impact on the award system and low wage, low skill occupations?
 
Global Crisis & Australian Politics: Time for the Greens to make their move
Peter McMahon
Debate about ‘whether’ global warming is happening has been replaced this year by debate about what to do about it, and the idea of ‘peak oil’ has gained wider acceptance. Together these two issues indicate the end of two centuries of socioeconomic development based in mass industrial development guided by an ideology of economic liberalism.
This may dramatically transform governance both nationally and globally. Will it provide the opportunity for the Greens to become the third force in national political life?
 
Testing citizenship, failing human rights
Tony Smith
When a Liberal MP says that the Federal Government might impose a ‘test’ before granting applicants Australian citizenship, the idea is probably being discussed at the highest levels. Critics of the Howard Government have identified ‘kite flying’ by backbenchers and Ministers as part of the Coalition’s populist strategy. In the case of a test for establishing suitability for citizenship however, both the history of Australian attitudes towards immigrants and recent policies suggest that the string on this kite should be cut.
 
So you want to write a History of Australia? A guide for Beginners
George Parsons
 
Booze
Norman Abjorensen
 
Book review: Changing Ways of Death in Twentieth-Century Australia. War, Medicine and the Funeral Business. By Pat Jalland
Eileen Chanin