Tony Abbott promised to stop the boats. With the help of Kevin Rudd’s “PNG solution,” he has. But at what cost? In Quarterly Essay 53, Paul Toohey tells the dramatic stories of asylum seekers heading from Java to Australia, investigates people-smuggling and witnesses the aftermath of a sinking at sea. Toohey also examines Australian attitudes to boat people, and what politicians have made of these. He assesses the diplomatic fall-out from turning back boats and asks: have we missed our chance for an Indonesian solution, a realistic alternative to the brutally effective system we now have? This is an unflinching look at people at their worst and best – and most ruthless and most vulnerable – by one of Australia’s finest reporters. “Any hope for a genuine regional solution rested with Indonesia, the final stepping stone to Australia ... Why did neither Howard, in his better times with Indonesia, or Labor, from 2007, seek a one-on-one solution with Indonesia? ‘The Indonesian Solution.’ Those words would have been the most convincing political statement any Australian government could ever deliver to Australian voters on asylum seekers.” —Paul Toohey, That Sinking Feeling Winner, 2014 Walkley Award for feature writing Longlisted, 2014 John Button Prize ‘...one of the most useful and important of Black Inc’s long series of Quarterly Essays’ —Paul Monk, Weekend Australian ‘...no one can doubt the time Toohey has put in on ground most of us are unacquainted with. This honest and highly readable essay should... be engaged with by anyone yearning towards a humane outcome for those who seek sanctuary with us.’ —Thomas Keneally, The Age ‘A powerful, necessary reminder that ‘asylum seekers’ have stories, loves, fears, names, and faces.’ —Australian Book Review ‘That Sinking Feeling is not written to appease either side of politics, but to provide a deeper understanding of a complex situation by telling a human tale that has too often been drowned out by the screaming match.’ —Walkley Magazine

The first in-depth analysis of the new government's keystone policies. In Quarterly Essay 53, Paul Toohey looks at one of Tony Abbott's signature promises: to stop the boats. Has his government succeeded? If so, at what cost? In Java, Toohey observes asylum seekers heading for Australia and reports on the Indonesian response. He tells the stories of individual refugees, looks closely at people-smugglers in action, and witnesses the aftermath of a sinking at sea. Toohey also examines Australian attitudes to refugees, and what politicians have made of them.

Troubled Transit considers the situation of asylum seekers stuck in limbo in Indonesia from a number of perspectives. It presents not only the narratives of many transit migrants but also the perceptions of Indonesian authorities and of representatives of international and non-government organizations responsible for the care of transiting asylum seekers. Fascinated by the extraordinary and seemingly limitless resilience shown by asylum seekers during their often lengthy and dangerous journeys, the author highlights one particular fragment of their journeys - their time in Indonesia, which many expect to be the last stepping stone to a new life. While they long for their new life to unfold, most asylum seekers become embroiled in the complexities of living in transit. Indonesia, a vast archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, is more than a location where people spend time waiting; it is a nation state that interacts with transiting asylum seekers and formulates policies that have a profound impact on their experience in transit there. Troubled Transit tries to explain the complexities faced by the transiting migrants within the context of the Indonesian government and its political challenges, including its relationship with Australia. The Australia-centric view of recent asylum seeker issues has tended to ignore the larger socio-political context of the migratory routes and the perspectives of transit states towards asylum seekers stuck in transit. This book hopes to direct the Australia-centric gaze northwards to take Indonesian policies and policymaking into account, thereby giving Indonesia more relevance as a transit country and as an important partner in regional protection schemes and migration management. Even though some Indonesian policies and practices are less than favourable for asylum seekers, and even reprehensible from a human rights perspective, more attention must be paid to ongoing developments that impact on transiting asylum seekers in Indonesia if any of the hardships they suffer there are to be alleviated.

Updated edition, covering Brexit, Trump, Xi’s ambitions for China, and the geopolitical implications of the COVID-19 pandemic Everything Australia wants to achieve as a country depends on its capacity to understand the world outside and to respond effectively to it. In Fear of Abandonment, expert and insider Allan Gyngell tells the story of how Australia has shaped the world and been shaped by it since it established an independent foreign policy during the dangerous days of 1942. Gyngell argues that the fear of being abandoned – originally by Britain, and later by our most powerful ally, the United States – has been an important driver of how Australia acts in the world. Covering everything from the White Australia policy to the South China sea dispute, this is a gripping and authoritative account of the way Australians and their governments have helped create the world we now inhabit in the twenty-first century. In revealing the history of Australian foreign affairs, it lays the foundation for how it should change. Today Australia confronts a more difficult set of international challenges than any we have faced since 1942 – this new edition brings the story up to date. Allan Gyngell is National President of the Australian Institute of International Affairs and an honorary professor at the Australian National University. His long career in Australian international relations included appointments as director-general of the Office of National Assessments and founding executive director of the Lowy Institute. He worked as a diplomat, policy officer and analyst in several government departments and as international adviser to Paul Keating. He is the co-author of Making Australian Foreign Policy and the author of Fear of Abandonment.

This book explores a new approach to cultural literacy. Taking a pedagogical perspective, it looks at the skills, knowledge, and abilities involved in understanding and interpreting cultural differences, and proposes new ways of approaching such differences as sources of richness in intercultural and interdisciplinary collaborations. Cultural Literacy and Empathy in Education Practice balances theory with practice, providing practical examples for educators who wish to incorporate cultural literacy into their teaching. The book includes case studies, interviews with teachers and students, and examples of exercises and assessments, all backed by years of robust scholarly research.

This book brings together an international group of artists and writers to respond to the question of how our new world orders force us to reconsider urban walking and urban spaces in ways which extend into the digital sphere of online dialogue and screen sharing. In their reflections on walking cities in lockdown, the artists and writers contributing to this book share a number of complementary themes. Key to this is the question of how we walk in post-pandemic cities and how such walking might motivate or be motivated by transgressive, atomised or collective thoughts, affects, relations and experiences. Here we see how navigating cities in lockdown requires us to re-territorialise, improvise, create and de- or re-politize. There is, for example, a clear distinction between the severe lockdown measures that were introduced in Cape Town and the liberal appeal to good citizenship that northern hemisphere cities such as Stockholm chose to rely on. These measures impact on the way we experience urban walking and, in each case, lead to deeper reflections about the heightened presence of ideological structures embedded within the urban.