AQ: Australian Quarterly 92.1 Jan-Mar 2021

Despite it being an arbitrary point on the long arrow of time, there is still a certain relief in turning the page on 2020. The cynical among us no doubt foresee even larger upheavals in store within the next decade, but for a moment I hope we can enjoy the passing of what has been one of the most unpredictable, distressing, destructive, and remarkable periods of modern history. Protest has been forefront in 2020: George Floyd and BLM; anti-lockdowners and QAnon believers. This edition has a strong flavour of protest – looking both at the past and the potential future of resistance. We kick it off with a compelling pair of companion pieces looking at the history of protest in Australia as well as what the blurring of the lines…

AQ welcomes submissions of articles and manuscripts on contemporary economic, political, social and philosophical issues, especially where scientific insights have a bearing and where the issues impact on Australian and global public life. All contributions are unpaid. Manuscripts should be original and have not been submitted or published elsewhere, although in negotiation with the Editor, revised prior publications or presentations may be included. Submissions may be subject to peer review. Word length is between 1000 and 3000 words. Longer and shorter lengths may be considered. Articles should be written and argued clearly so they can be easily read by an informed, but non-specialist, readership. A short biographical note of up to 50 words should accompany the work. The Editor welcomes accompanying images. Authors of published articles are required to assign…

The following day, videos of the event, went viral. News of Floyd’s killing – as well as the intensity, size, and geographic spread of the protests that followed and the policing of those protests – made global headlines, overshadowing the pandemic as lead story for the first time in months. Tens of thousands of people in Australia took to the streets in protest, joining others in the United States and around the world. Others made individual gestures of protest while staying at home or alone or in small groups on the side of the road outside city centres. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said of the protests that ‘There’s no need to import things happening in other countries here to Australia… Australia is not the United States’. He said that things…

The literature on protest in Australia has been better on the socialists, peace activists, feminists and gays than on the kinds of people attracted to the anti-lockdown activity. These recent protests have attracted little sympathy from most Australians in 2020, but it is equally true that protest which cannot be broadly marshalled under the banner of ‘progressive’ has largely been ignored by historians more generally. It is given little weight by Clive Hamilton in his What Do We Want? The Story of Protest in Australia (2016), although he does turn briefly to ‘the Cronulla riots’ of 2005 and anti-carbon tax protest in 2011. Part of the problem here is that those who write about protest are also narrating either their own lives or their own sympathies. Hamilton’s illustrated book, published…

When COVID struck in March 2020, several million Australians were retrenched or had their working hours reduced. At the same time 4.3 million people or 32% of working Australians began ‘working from home’ digitally.1 Yet what happened was not simply the consequence of a rare epidemic that damaged a healthy economy. Rather, COVID impacted on a society already experiencing a decades-old process of major social, financial and technological disruption that is far from over. The official view in early 2020 was that Australia’s economy was in good shape having enjoyed decades of unbroken growth since the early 1980s. This was evident when the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, boasted how Australia held the world record for ‘27 years of uninterrupted annual economic growth’ based on an average GDP growth rate…

GENERAL MANAGER OF THE AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF POLICY AND SCIENCE The Australian Institute of Policy and Science would like to take a moment to congratulate all of those scientists – in Australia and around the world – that worked through adversity to not only support COVID research but to keep the wheels of the global science system moving. One thing has become clear, that effective communication of science has been the bedrock of successful responses to the virus, showing the word what a critical and nuanced skill SciComm is. For over 20 years, the Tall Poppy Awards have been recognising science and science communication excellence here in Australia. In 2020 we received 260 applications, across each state and territory, and 60 Young Tall Poppy Awards were presented. Research interests ranged…