Category: Liberals
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Me in Jacobin on Australian universities and the free speech culture wars
This is just a quick post to let you all know that Jacobin Australia has published a piece by myself on the transnational free speech culture wars and the attacks on Australian universities, linking what has been happening in this country with what is happening in Britain and the US. You can read the article…
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Parliament’s current obsession with s18c
On ‘Harmony Day’ yesterday, the Turnbull government announced that it would seek to introduce legislation that would amend the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) to remove the words ‘insult’ or ‘offend’ from section 18c of the Act. Under these proposed changes, only racial ‘harassment’ or ‘intimidation’ would be prohibited. To many, this seemed like a…
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17 December, 1967: Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt disappears
Harold Holt had succeeded the long-serving Liberal Party Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies in 1966 and won an election in November of the same year. Holt continued the commitment of Australian troops to Vietnam, introduced by Menzies in 1965, and this issue dominated Australian politics over the next decade. At the same time, the Holt…
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Fairfax to students: ‘You silly young people. Don’t you know the sixties are over!’
Since the student protests that kicked off last Wednesday, Fairfax Media in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have run three comment pieces on how the students needed to drop the traditional mass street protest of the 1960s/1970s and employ ‘new’ tactics in the fight against higher education cuts. First there was Annabel Crabb, who wrote: I’m…
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Waking up to a LNP victory
Here’s hoping that the Senate preferences don’t allow a Coalition majority in both houses. And hands off the ARC! Btw, Tanya Plibersek should be new Labor leader. Now I’m off to read issues of Labour Monthly from the 1950s…
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Liberals question relevancy of academic research
I just thought I’d mention this. A day after I wrote this post about questions of relevancy for academic research, the Liberals have announced that they would cut ARC funding for ‘wasteful’ projects. They identified several current ARC projects that they indicate would not attract similar funding if sought under an Abbott government. Both the…
New Historical Express 