School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
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Item“The Age” on public affairs from 1861 to 1881( 1950)At the present, time, we may buy the Age in Melbourne every morning except Sunday for twopence. It enjoys the reputation for being a reliable newspaper, not sensationalist, and only using its largest headlines for some matter of real importance, not of just passing popular interest. Its leaders are serious, thoughtful, with a tendency to the left rather than to the right; but not expressing merely the views of any one political party. Once, the Age was the organ of change. It persistently opposed what it called the pretences of the wealthy - the squatters and the importers. It was a popular paper, pleading for the small man, to give him a place to live his own life and work for himself. Today, we may still find the same old tone, upholding the rights of the individual against the attempts of the large group, who threaten to absorb him. It no longer has the highest circulation among Melbourne papers. The tabloid press has outstripped it in that. I have looked at the Age in this earlier period to find out what it was like, and what it was saying. In this thesis I am trying to give an account of what the Age said about some important matters of public interest during the years 1861 to 1881. A newspaper, in giving the news and in reviewing it in articles, deals with many sides of the community's life. In order to bring the subject of this thesis within a reasonable compass, attention has been given to certain subjects only which happened to be dealt with by the Age in these years. These are the opening of the land in Victoria, the introduction of protective tariffs, and the struggle over a number of years between the lower and upper houses in the Victorian Parliament as constituted in 1854. Since the Age spoke most frankly and forcefully on these matters, some attempt will be made to estimate how much it influenced public opinion in these matters. (From Chapter 1)
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ItemAustralian new left politics, 1956-1972( 2009)A study of the Australian New Left might not immediately appear pertinent to contemporary society. Adherents of New Right economics have been, until recently, unshakable in their global ascendancy over the past three decades. From Russia to Tanzania, discourses of neo-liberalism have become so deeply entrenched in world politics and trade that they have been adopted by the transitional states of Eastern and Central Europe, along with other less developed countries in the international system, despite the fact that all have very different cultural histories and levels of economic development. There have been few exceptions, with one example Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. The discrediting during the global oil crisis of the mid-1970s of the post-WWII orthodoxy of Keynesian economics, social democracy and the Welfare State has played its role in this paradigm shift. More pertinent to the radical left may be that the legacy of Soviet Communism's 'terrors and errors' still looms large in the consciousness of socialist thought, provoking disagreement over what can be salvaged from the cadaver of Marxist theory. The increasing specialisation and integration of world marketplaces since the 1960s has also led to questions over whether the notion of a working class - so essential to Marx's utopian revolution - still exists at all. The rise of 'identity politics' and the relativism of postmodernist thought, seen as at the cutting edge of academic theory since the 1970s, have represented further challenges to those desiring to rebuff the entrenched global logic of consumer capitalism. Capitalism is the only 'meta-narrative' left uncontested by postmodernists, while other ideologies - such as Marxism, feminism and even the discipline of history - are criticised for their failure to adequately address the realities of difference within the groups (i.e. workers, women) that they focus upon. This thesis re-examines a time when the left commanded a degree of mainstream popularity; when hundreds of thousands of Australians took to the streets to protest against the government, and when, however briefly, Marxist sympathisers constituted respectable numbers in academic circles, to ascertain what lessons, if any, might be learnt for 'socialist humanist' campaigns today. The anti-globalisation campaigns of the past decade and recent concerns regarding climate change represent hope as starting points for contemporary mass radicalism. Recently, I travelled beside a thoughtful and articulate man in his late fifties who had been a student at the University of Western Australia during the early 1970s. He had been acutely aware of radicals at other campuses such as Monash at this time, and laughed dismissively that student activists were still saying the same things nowadays. While my travelling companion was amused that contemporary student radicals continue to subscribe to what he sees as archaic and refuted ideas and philosophies, I believe that this constancy is due to the fact that New Left criticism remains highly applicable today.
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ItemVictorian railway policy, 1850-1883( 1952)Introduction: In this thesis my aim is to present a clear outline – a narrative account – of the early history of Victorian Railway Policy, concerning the Railways as government department and the later change to statutory corporation. But in doing so, my aim is to suggest the main reasons, together with their degree of importance, for this particular sequence of events that is the beginning and most important part of Railway History. These reasons are intended to be brought out and substantiated by a significant selection of political evidence. They can be no more than suggested, however, because this evidence is confined mainly to Parliamentary documents, contemporary political writings and fairly inadequate secondary source histories. It is political evidence, rather arbitrarily defined, and therefore does not extend, for example, to the favourable or unfavourable condition of the London money market at certain times and its effects on railway policy. Nor in another direction, does it extend sufficiently to the power and influence of local pressure groups, which, together with the charges of corruption that are so often put forward as reasons for particular lines of railway, must be among the most difficult matters to investigate, gauge and verify in this subject – which is made enormous by ramifications of that kind. Nevertheless, there will be, I hope, considerable value in the disentangling and enumerating of such reasons as are plausibly given for the change and development of railway policy. They might perhaps provide interesting information about the political climate of the time, but I think they would be far more usefully employed if they were to be compared with the apparent reasons behind other public utility policies, and , especially, with the principles introducing and governing the recent British Nationalization statutes.
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ItemThe Premiership of Sir Albert Dunstan( 1960)Writers on Australian politics have constantly stressed the need for detailed research into the Country Party's role in its structure, and some have "tended to deplore the Labour Party's almost complete monopoly of such pursuits. Out of a profound sympathy for such sentiments, as well as a desire to unearth something original, I decided to direct my attention to this need. Apart from considerations of domicile, 'which leave little elbow room for an impecunious student, there were other pressing reasons for concentrating my efforts on Victoria. In New South Wales and Queensland, the Country Party has never enjoyed sufficient power in the legislature to form its own government, but has had to be content with participating jointly with other parties of an urban non-Labour stamp, and only during short breaks in long-established Labour ascendancies. In Victoria, however, the coin has fallen on the reverse side. There Labour has achieved power only for short unstable intervals as a minority Government, until 1952 when it commanded a majority over all other parties for the first time in its existence. In its place the responsibility of governing the State has been thrown from one non-Labour party to another, frequently too hot to hold in such an unstable climate. Since 1917 the Country Party has made its own peculiar contribution to this instability, by exerting an influence out of all proportion to its electoral strength. In 1935 this culminated in its seizure of office from the party with which it had shared it for two and a half years, and its enjoyment of an almost uninterrupted decade of office under the record-breaking premiership of Sir Albert Dunstan. Until 1943 he led a minority Government composed entirely of his own party members, deriving his support from a hapless Labour Party which gained little in the way of concessions. Even when the latter withdrew its support, the Country Party under Dunstan was able to continue in office with little loss of influence despite a small grant of portfolios to the Liberals. Such a sweep of political history, with such singular features, seemed at first sight to be too great a gift for a Melbourne research worker to overlook. (From Preface)
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ItemConservative radicals: Australian neoconservatism and its intellectual antecedents( 1989)This study charts the rise of Australian neoconservatism. With reference to a range of influences which coalesced in the journal Quadrant, it is argued that the genesis of a new intellectual conservatism had its origins in the decade of the 1950s, and that it has reached its culmination in the contemporary phenomenon of neoconservatism. Correspondingly, it is contended that recognition of this evolution reveals the longstanding inadequacies of depictions of 'the right' in this country, and the wider implications of this for Australian critique. A preliminary chapter discusses the shortcomings of conceptual approaches to the topic of Australian conservatism, and indicates the ways in which they are challenged by the neoconservative evolution. Part I considers the components of an informal alliance which crystallized in the 1950s, gravitated towards the journal Quadrant, and lay the foundations for a new conservatism. It is argued that despite their disparity, important common ground existed between a Jewish-European component of Australian society, a Catholic component, and a group influenced by Sydney philosopher John Anderson. A focus on founding Quadrant editor James McAuley completes this discussion of neoconservative antecedents, and highlights both the commonality and diversity of sources from which the new conservatism would emerge. Part II traces the evolution of neoconservative critique with reference to some of its central and recurrent themes. It is shown that neoconservative concerns were prefigured in the early Cold War period, and that these have been heightened and amplified in the light of ensuing developments. Such themes include the depiction of a 'new class' within society, and the rise of an 'adversary culture'; both of which were given impetus by developments of the 1960s. Exploration of the continuity and character of this evolving critique also underlines the inadequacy of critical approaches to it. In this way, it is shown that the emergence of Australian neoconservatism simultaneously demands reappraisal of the ways in which Australian intellectual traditions are conceptualized.
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ItemStolen generations: the forcible removal of aboriginal children from their families: identity and belonging( 2000)Stolen Generations: 'Identity and Belonging' explores the ways in which members of the Stolen Generations have sought to make sense of, and establish their sense of belonging and negotiate their Indigenous identities. In order to appreciate the uniqueness of the Stolen Generation experience and the challenges faced by individuals in forging their places of belonging, understanding the climate and context in which members of the Stolen Generations lived in is vital. Members of the Stolen Generations were confronted with and have had to come to terms with the paradoxes of history. Members of the Stolen Generations were taken away by, and raised in the very cultures and systems that damaged their societies of origin, and which continued to stigmatise Aboriginality as inferior. Within this context of analysis, the research gives attention to the various ways in which Aboriginal individuals in non-Aboriginal care came to their earliest sense of their Aboriginality. This exploration acts as a commentary of the construction of Aboriginality within the wider non-Aboriginal context - the stereotypes, the racism and the ignorance that informed those opinions. The ensuing search for a fuller understanding of what Aboriginality means to those members of the Stolen Generations is a highly complex and challenging one. For those trying to re-establish their ties with their birth families and communities, the years of physical and cultural isolation make it difficult for individuals to unproblematically find their place/s within the Indigenous families and to negotiate their Indigenous identities. Added to this, the experience of finding places of belonging and acceptance are inevitably shaped and determined by the attitudes and responses of the Koori community towards members of the Stolen Generations. The phrase "bringing them home", which in many ways has become synonymous with the issue of the Stolen Generations, carries with it the assumption that those who were 'lost' simply make their way back home, back to a recognizable and pre-existing community that is ready to welcome these individuals with open arms. The present research draws attention to the fact for most, there is no simple and straightforward route 'home'. This research explores the complexity of this journey - giving careful attention to the ways in which this rupture from cultural heritage and family base poses challenges for those trying to find that 'home' or 'belonging place' and intricacies involved in the negotiation of those Indigenous identities.