Australia is less secure than it has ever been and the greatest threat comes from our elected government. Political leaders increasingly promote secrecy, ignorance and fear to introduce new laws that undermine individual liberties and safety. It is a criminal offence to receive or publish a wide range of information unrelated to national security. Our defence weapons are so dependent on US technical support that Australia couldn't defend itself without US involvement. And comprehensive databases on citizens' digital fingerprints and facial recognition characteristics are being amassed by the Commonwealth. Conspiracy? Paranoia? Read Secret- The Making of Australia's Security State and you decide. Fresh archival material and revealing details of conversations between former CIA, US State Department and Australian officials will make you reconsider the world around you.

The book of leaks.

Called “powerful and provocative" by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, author of the New York Times bestselling How to be an Antiracist, this explosive book of history and cultural criticism reveals how white feminism has been used as a weapon of white supremacy and patriarchy deployed against Black and Indigenous women, and women of color. Taking us from the slave era, when white women fought in court to keep “ownership” of their slaves, through the centuries of colonialism, when they offered a soft face for brutal tactics, to the modern workplace, White Tears/Brown Scars tells a charged story of white women’s active participation in campaigns of oppression. It offers a long overdue validation of the experiences of women of color. Discussing subjects as varied as The Hunger Games, Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, the viral BBQ Becky video, and 19th century lynchings of Mexicans in the American Southwest, Ruby Hamad undertakes a new investigation of gender and race. She shows how the division between innocent white women and racialized, sexualized women of color was created, and why this division is crucial to confront. Along the way, there are revelatory responses to questions like: Why are white men not troubled by sexual assault on women? (See Christine Blasey Ford.) With rigor and precision, Hamad builds a powerful argument about the legacy of white superiority that we are socialized within, a reality that we must apprehend in order to fight. "A stunning and thorough look at White womanhood that should be required reading for anyone who claims to be an intersectional feminist. Hamad’s controlled urgency makes the book an illuminating and poignant read. Hamad is a purveyor of such bold thinking, the only question is, are we ready to listen?" —Rosa Boshier, The Washington Post

Provides an explanation of the economic ideas that affect the lives of every Australian and considers the application of these ideas in Australia by institutions such as the Treasury, the Reserve Bank, the media and the political party. Explores the new thinking that challenges the foundations of the existing orthodoxy. Includes an index. The author has covered the Australian economic debate since the early 1970s and is currently a columnist for several Australian newspapers.

Black Cotton is an ongoing comic book series set in an alternate reality that revolves around an exorbitantly wealthy black family, the Cottons, created by Brian Hawkins and Patrick Foreman, Illustrated by Marco Perugini, and published by Scout Comics. Set in an alternate reality where the social order of “white” and “black” is reversed, when it comes to social standing and class, the Cottons are at the top of the food chain, part of the One Percent, and are seemingly untouchable. However, that all changes when Zion, their police officer son, who decided to not follow in the footsteps of his father and matriculate towards running the family business, is involved in the shooting of a minority white woman. In a reality similar to our own, social tensions are already high, race is a hot topic, and the call for equality between white and black is aggressively being pursued. Thus, Zion Cotton shooting Elizabeth Nightingale, a twenty-something college student on scholarship for track, ignites their city in a fury of protests and a call for action against racial injustice. Led by the family’s patriarch, Elijah Cotton, and matriarch, Jaleesa Cotton, the Cottons are thrusted into the middle of a highly controversial predicament and immediately attempt to use their wealth, prestige, and power to remedy the problem. However, while the youngest Cotton, Xavier, a teenager, actively protests the social injustices with his friends, the middle child, Qia Cotton, the acting CCO of Black Cotton Ventures, a multi-billion dollar manufacturing conglomerate, does damage control for her wayward brother. Ultimately, more division is created between both families as the Nightingales, unwilling to be assuaged, seek justice for Elizabeth, their daughter, who survived. “Black Cotton is a comic, but it’s also a mindset that’s being explored in a comic.”

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.