This book provides an engaging and distinctive treatment for anyone seeking to understand the significance and interpretation of the Constitution.

Australia's engagement with Asia from 1944 until the late 1960s was based on a sense of responsibility to the United Kingdom and its Southeast Asian colonies as they navigated a turbulent independence into the British Commonwealth. The circumstances of the early Cold War decades also provided for a mutual sense of solidarity with the non-communist states of East Asia, with which Australia mostly enjoyed close relationships. From 1967 into the early 1970s, however, Commonwealth Responsibility and Cold War Solidarity demonstrates that the framework for this deep Australian engagement with its region was progressively eroded by a series of compounding, external factors: the 1967 formation of ASEAN and its consolidation by the mid-1970s as the premier regional organisation surpassing the Asian and Pacific Council (ASPAC); Britain's withdrawal from East of Suez; Washington's de-escalation and gradual withdrawal from Vietnam after March 1968; the 1969 Nixon doctrine that America's Asia-Pacific allies must take up more of the burden of providing for their own security; and US rapprochement with China in 1972. The book shows that these profound changes marked the start of Australia's political distancing from the region during the 1970s despite the intentions, efforts and policies of governments from Whitlam onwards to foster deeper engagement. By 1974, Australia had been pushed to the margins of the region, with its engagement premised on a broadening but shallower transactional basis.

Discussion of the role of conversation as a source of truth in current affairs in Australia. Argues that during the last two centuries reading and writing have been foremost in communication. Yet despite today's information revolution and globalisation, conversation is the basis for human history. Includes bibliography and index. Author is Professor of History at the University of New England, New South Wales. Previous titles are 'The Europeans in Australia: A History' and 'Camden: Farm and Village Life in Early New South Wales'.

This book describes how ideas about federalism influenced those who drafted the Australian Constitution.

The Commonwealth Orange Book rates Australiaâs performance against similar countries and proposes policy reforms to schools and universities, hospitals and housing, roads and railways, cities and regions, budgets and taxes, retirement incomes and climate change. It includes Grattan Instituteâs new âInternational Scorecardâ, which shows Australians live longer than most other people, and public debt is relatively low. But our electricity supply is more polluting, less reliable and more expensive than in comparable countries; we lag behind other developed economies on school results; and housing costs and homelessness are relatively high. The challenge for the next Commonwealth Government is to revive Australiaâs proud tradition of enlightened public policy. The next government needs to choose to do less, but deliver more. We can continue to be the lucky country, but we must make our own luck. On school education, it suggests that the government needs to finish off school funding reforms, and set up a national evidence institute, while strengthening incentives for universities to improve initial teacher education. On higher education, it recommends a return to demand-driven funding of universities. Reforms to the HELP loan scheme are needed to help fund this change, and potential increases in funding for vocational education. The government should encourage more students into vocational education, although better funding arrangements for vocational education need careful thought and negotiations with the states. [Overview, ed]