Australia Politics

Join Henty's Hero on an adventure in Australia in the early days of its settlement, when the bush-rangers and the natives constituted a real and formidable danger. Reuben, a young English lad, after rather a stormy boyhood, emigrates to Australia, where he gets employment as an officer in the mounted police.

Navigating the Spanish Lake examines Spain's long presence in the Pacific Ocean (1521-1898) in the context of its global empire. Building on a growing body of literature on the Atlantic world and indigenous peoples in the Pacific, this pioneering book investigates the historiographical "Spanish Lake" as an artifact that unites the Pacific Rim (the Americas and Asia) and Basin (Oceania) with the Iberian Atlantic.

Have you ever bunged it on? Behaved like a drongo? Added mayo to a story? Lost your Reg Grundies? Join bestselling storyteller William McInnes as he offers his own take on our colourful and colloquial way with words. From the simpler times of childhood to today's testing (and unprecedented!) times, or when we're wasting time, enjoying sporting times or hitting the big time, Australians have a turn of phrase for every situation. Our love of plain speaking communicates the essence of the thing to our mates, to those in the know - and to those who should know better.

This unprecedented biography of Hawke includes an exclusive series of interviews with him - the last that he gave - as well as unfiltered access to his extensive trove of personal papers. It features new interviews with more than 100 people who knew and worked with Hawke, including his family and friends, political and union colleagues, and rivals; advisers and public servants, and journalists, along with international contemporaries of Hawke such as George H. W. Bush, John Major, Brian Mulroney, James Baker and George Shultz.

In 1999, Munjed Al Muderis was a surgical resident working in Baghdad when the military police marched into the operating theatre and ordered the team to mutilate army deserters. When the head of surgery refused, he was executed. Munjed's choices were stark - comply and breach the medical oath, refuse and face death or flee. That day, Munjed's life changed forever. He escaped to Indonesia and boarded a boat to Australia.

As a National Public Radio reporter covering the last stand of the Taliban in Afghanistan's southern borderland, Sarah Chayes became deeply immersed in the attempt to rebuild a broken nation. With her NPR assignment finished in early 2002, she left reporting to help turn around the country's fortunes, accepting a job running a nonprofit founded by President Hamid Karzai's brother. With remarkable access to leading players in the postwar government, Chayes witnessed a tragic, perverse turn of events.

For months during 1943 there was no night in Hellfire Pass. By the light of flares, carbide lamps and bamboo fires, men near-naked and skeletal cut a passage through stone to make way for a railway. Among these men were some of the 22,000 Australian soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese during World War II. In camps across Asia and the Pacific, they struggled, died, and survived with a little help from their mates.

For the last nine centuries, Hawaiian tradition has used the wickedness of the Maui king Hua to depict the consequences of sacrificing righteousness for superficial political gains. His reign was known for its pointless warfare, waste of resources, and corruption. Condemning his dutiful high priest to death under false pretenses, Hua and his subjects finally earn the wrath of the gods. Drought and famine decimate Maui. The lush countryside of Hana becomes a wasteland. As they flee, the curse follows. Atonement resides with the sons of the murdered priest. If they can be found.

Many of us don’t know much about mythological stories from these regions, and it is my pleasure and privilege to educate you on the intricate details that lie within them. That’s why I have also provided some fascinating facts and historical background about each of these peoples. Creation myths, legacies, the sacrificing of children, the empires, and their wars are all mentioned and touched on in this book.

The Afterlife Confessional follows Bill's journey for answers as he looks through the dizzying kaleidoscope of his clients' lives - the widower who escaped an aged-care trap to take her husband's ashes on the road trip of a lifetime; the man who spent his life paying it forward to try to make up for one shameful act; the closet dominatrix who quietly confronts her husband's infidelity by comforting those truly in need; the devoted couple who insist on going hand-in-hand into the afterlife.

This book is about freedom and the right to have an opinion. A concept that has been fought over for centuries. Whilst we think of Australia as being a free society, You Can't Say That! challenges this notion, arguing that the freedoms all Australians once enjoyed have been systematically eroded over last few decades, and how, as a nation, we must fight to get them back.

The relationship between the US and China, the world's two superpowers, is peculiarly volatile. It rests on a seismic fault of cultural misunderstanding, historical grievance and ideological incompatibility. No other nations are so quick to offend and be offended. Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has studied, lived in and worked with China for more than 40 years, is one of the very few people who can offer real insight into the mindsets of the leadership whose judgement will determine if a war will be fought.

Detailing the development of the prison and its outlying stations, including its dreaded coal mines and providing an account of the changing views to convict rehabilitation, Convict-era Port Arthur focuses in on a number of individuals, telling the story through their eyes. Charles O'Hara Booth, a significant commandant of Port Arthur; Mark Jeffrey, a convict who became the grave digger on the Island of the Dead and William Thompson, who arrived just as the new probation system started and who was forced to work in the treacherous coal mines.

Rum, beer, scotch, wine, beer and more beer. For nearly 250 years Australian history has been punctuated with stories of booze and boozing. From Cook's voyages and the First Fleet to the Rum Rebellion, the mutiny of the 99th Regiment, the soldiers' riot of 1916, six o'clock closing and beyond, we've been a nation that likes a drink. With the eye of the master storyteller that he is, Jim Haynes has collected the best yarns, verses, stories and anecdotes of our boozy history. He uncovers the good and the bad of our national character and its relationship with grog.

Available once again for a new generation, the first volume in Arthur Ashe’s epic trilogy that chronicles the remarkable legacy of Black athletes in the United States—a major addition to our understanding of American history and the fulfillment of this legendary sports star and global activist’s lifelong dream.

In the autumn of 1992, two young women students at Melbourne University went to the police claiming that they had been indecently assaulted at a party. The man they accused was the head of their co-ed residential college. The controversial book that Helen Garner wrote about the resulting Ormond College sexual harassment case caused a social media storm. Prominent feminists were outraged at Garner's perceived support for the man involved, but many saw her approach a necessary and much welcome nuance towards the power dynamic between men and women.

Robodebt was a new debt-creation system that was used to illegally pursue close to half a million Australian welfare recipients for fake debts generated by the thousands. It was described by the Royal Commission's report as a 'massive failure of public administration' caused by 'venality, incompetence and cowardice'. Essentially, Australians were gaslit by their own government, which doggedly and knowingly concocted a program that was both mathematically wrong and illegal, just to shake down innocent people for money, then lied about it for four and a half years.

Inside Cardboard Box 39 at the South Australian Museum’s storage facility lies the forgotten skull of an Aboriginal man who died 85 years before. His misspelled name is etched on the crown, but the many bones in boxes around him remain unidentified. Who was Yokununna, and how did he die? His story reveals the layered, exploitative White Australian mindset that has long rendered Aboriginal reality all but invisible.

The world is under cyber-attack. The secretive terror outfit of linked lone-wolf operatives known as Zodiac has activated another terrorist cell. Chaos will be unleashed at six-hour intervals, with each event more catastrophic than the last, culminating in a devastating global catastrophe within 48 hours. Consequences are unthinkable. The US president has the power to enact the Internet Freedom Act - the 'kill switch'. Turning off the net will stop the attacks and give the CIA and the Pentagon time, but it's not that simple.

The origins of Covid-19 are shrouded in mystery. Scientists and government officials insisted, for a year and a half, that the virus had a natural origin, ridiculing anyone who dared contradict this view. Tech giants swept the internet, censoring and silencing debate in the most extreme fashion. Yet it is undeniable that a secretive facility in Wuhan was immersed in genetically manipulating bat-coronaviruses in perilous experiments. And as soon as the news of an outbreak in Wuhan leaked, the Chinese military took control and gagged all laboratory insiders.