Where truth lies
In my first year at Monash University in 1962 our wonderful history lecturer, Geoffrey Bolton, encouraged us all to read the London-born E. H. Carr’s provocative ‘What is History?’, which had been published the year before. This involved us thinking about the nature of historical truth and the complex relationship(s) between historians and the past. We were especially encouraged to confront the thorny issues of historical interpretation and of whether matters of fact and of value can clearly be differentiated.
Unlike Carr, Ann Curthoys & John Docker fundamental …

THE Coalition’s proposal to allow schools to self-manage projects makes perfect sense.
It is a bizarre irony that the former minister for education, Julia Gillard, succeeded Kevin Rudd as prime minister when it is the waste and mismanagement of a program she is entirely responsible for that seriously damaged the Rudd government’s credibility and contributed to his downfall.
Given what we know about Gillard’s abilities, it is not surprising that, during the first few weeks of her administration, the wheels have fallen off her solution to stop the influx of asylum-seekers, and …

Julia Gillard once pledged herself to the unions, but today her allegiances are unclear.
AS the dust settles over the prime ministerial demise of Kevin Rudd and the hype surrounding Julia Gillard subsides, the questions remain: who is she and what does she stand for?
The fact that Gillard was parachuted into the job of prime minister by the largely “faceless” union backroom boys has led to the inevitable claim that she is a puppet of the union movement. Gillard recognised she needed to move quickly to counter that impression and declared …

Ross Fitzgerald also asks Why is the AFL so desperate for a second team from Sydney.
THIS week we had rugby league’s shameful State of Origin, and now I’m looking forward to an AFL contest that promises to be infinitely more captivating.
Sydney’s favourite AFL team, the Swans, plays my team, Collingwood, at ANZ Stadium next Saturday night in what will be a crucial match for their chances of making the finals.
Thus all AFL attention will be on the clash between the red and whites and the mighty Magpies, played in …

DO we really need regional universities? Surely Australians could access all the teaching and research they need online.
True, if you think of teaching and research as a simple commodity, such as wheat or coal, a commodity to be traded in competitive markets.
This is largely how tertiary education has been treated by recent Coalition and Labor governments. Funding cuts have forced universities to behave like big businesses, where vice-chancellors are now little more than overpaid chief executives who spend virtually all their time fund-raising.
But there are never enough funds, particularly for …

THE Rudd government’s resource super-profits tax is causing considerable consternation across the world, with global capital markets in utter disbelief.
It is generally recognised that a key responsibility for any national leader is to safeguard the country’s reputation abroad.
For an Australian prime minister this is not only vital for our trade and export relations, but also for our standing as an attractive destination for international capital markets.
Kevin Rudd seemed to recognise this imperative during a visit to Beijing in April 2008 when he observed: “Australia is an open market when it …

IT was ironic that Communications Minister Stephen Conroy announced the postponement of his internet filtering legislation via an adviser last week. Advice was not something he was fond of taking. Sensing a voter backlash on the legislation, which was supposed to be introduced into the parliament before the federal election, Rudd and Conroy are banking on removing it as an election issue. But will they?
If Conroy had introduced the legislation before the election, he might have risked the ire of the Greens and Electronic Frontiers Australia, but at least it …

TWO things are clear. In this year’s federal election Queensland will be the most crucial state, followed by NSW. To win seats off the ALP, let alone become prime minister, Tony Abbott will need to beat Kevin Rudd’s slick campaigning style and election techniques, most of which the Prime Minister learned in Queensland.
The issue for Abbott now is to do the in depth homework to position himself with a tactical and policy armoury to lead in to the actual campaign. He needs especially to understand how campaigns have been run …

Dr H. V. Evatt, who led the federal Australian Labor Party from 1951 to 1960, had  been a high-profile world figure during World War II and had served a term as an early president of the United Nations General Assembly.
Doc Evatt, notoriously, was a disastrous leader , the great Labor split of the 1950s occurred on his watch , but what is less known is that his political career was in difficulties even before he became leader. These difficulties arose from his failure to reconcile the competing demands of global diplomacy …

JUST before his ministerial responsibilities were significantly reduced, Peter Garrett made one of Australia’s great political understatements.
The former Midnight Oil frontman said of Labor’s insulation program: “We’re seeing a relatively small number of complaints in the system, given the scale of the system, about 0.5 per cent of complaints given the totality of the system. It has been a very successful program . . .” Two weeks later he was demoted and the program was cancelled.
As Coalition education spokesman Christopher Pyne pointed out last week, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd …

NEW environmental laws are undermining indigenous and non-indigenous property rights.
The protection of property rights in Australia is an important issue that is uniting indigenous and non-indigenous landholders.
Both are concerned that in recent years the introduction of vegetation clearing laws, compulsory property acquisitions and, recently, the Wild Rivers legislation in Queensland threaten their livelihoods. So they are seeking recognition and protection of their rights where they have been removed by environmental and heritage laws, and just compensation if these rights are removed.
One unlikely champion to take a stand on this issue …