Research stories
Australia doesn’t have a population policy – why?
By Dr Liz Allen, Postdoctoral Fellow, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. Australia lacks an overarching population policy or strategy. Over the years, multiple inquiries have recommended such a policy. Population policies the world over typically focus on births and…
Note to Liberals: on the leadership front, best to keep calm and carry on
By Dr Chris Wallace, Research Fellow (ARC DECRA), National Centre of Biography, ANU School of History. Do politicians read history any more? Liberal MPs who have not read Robert Menzies’ Afternoon Light: some memories of men and events (1967) should get it from the Parliamentary…
What the underground market for ransomware looks like
By Professor Roderic Broadhurst, Professor of Criminology, College of Arts and Social Science, and Fellow Research, College of Asia and the Pacific. The attack of ransomware “WannaCry” has put governments and businesses around the world on edge, but in fact the underground market…
Australian politics explainer: the White Australia policy
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has repeatedly claimed that Australia is the world’s most successful multicultural nation. While the sentiment has bipartisan support today, for more than half a century after Federation Australia boasted not of multiculturalism, but of its monoculture. In 1925,…
The tragedy of Mosul: battle against Islamic State is leading to all-too-familiar consequences
By Damian Doyle, PhD candidate, ANU Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies, and Dr Tristan Dunning, University of Queensland A tragedy is unfolding in Mosul, the northern Iraqi city that Islamic State (IS) has brutally occupied since June 2014. Airstrikes conducted by the international…
Going for gold: Trump, Louis XIV and interior design
By Dr Robert Wellington, Lecturer in Art History and Visual Culture, ANU School of Art and Design Yellow-gold swagged curtains, glimpsed in the first pictures from the Trump administration’s official duties in the Oval Office, have fuelled speculation over whether America’s new…
Drilling in the Bight: has BP learnt the right lessons from its Gulf of Mexico blowout?
By Andrew Hopkins, Emeritus Professor, ANU School of Sociology The Guardian newspaper recently hit a wall of non-response when it raised concerns about the possibility of an oil well blowout in BP’s proposed drilling operations in the Great Australian Bight. The facts are that bolts on…