Grafton Everest is a rotund, larger-than-life political larrikin from Australia’s northernmost state and has been thrust to the balance of power in the national Parliament thanks to some dubious preference whispering.
Sound familiar?
The brainchild of Griffith University history and politics emeritus professor Ross Fitzgerald, Grafton Everest from the fictional Australian state of “Mangoland first appeared in 1986 in the form of ‘Pushed from the Wings: An Entertainment.’
“I was at Griffith University during the worst periods of the Joh regime and volume two of my history of Queensland got pulped. I got …

University reform is not one size fits all. We really do need to recognise the special role that regional universities play in regional and remote Australia. Failure to do so will fail the regional economies that drive the Australian economy whether it be through traditional exports from agriculture, mining and tourism or growing ones like renewable energy, niche market advanced engineering and value added food and tourism products.
Regional Australia is difficult to service because populations are relatively small and thinly spread over large areas. It contrasts with more densely-packed …

Many historians are interested in the progress of social movements, some of which are dubbed inevitable. However, that ducks the question of timing.
Becoming a republic and same-sex marriage are said to be inevitable in Australia. But why have they not happened already?
Despite the defeat in the 1999 referendum, 62 per cent of Australians in 2001 still favoured a republic. In 2012, after the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, 58 per cent wanted to retain the monarchy. And this week the Australian Republican Movement announced that 51 per cent of Australians — a …

People were puffing away on cigarettes for hundreds of years before anyone twigged to the dangers. In the West, we initially weren’t smoking that much but, as the 20th century progressed, so our ­tobacco habit increased.
By the middle of the century most Australian men smoked but few women did.
Although it had been suspected cigarette smoking was harmful, the seriousness of this risk was ­unconfirmed until researcher Richard Doll in Britain conducted his landmark 1952 study.
The importance of Doll’s study into the risks of smoking was quickly recognised. Iain Macleod, then …