Further information

The New Critic is the on-line journal of the Institute of Advanced Studies.

It aims to present discussion and debate and opinion about matters of interest to us within the University and beyond - the time for an ideas exchange is now.

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Editorial

David Ritter
At his first ALP national conference, Kevin Rudd opened the body of his address by saying, "There comes a time in the affairs of nations when they are forced to think afresh about the challenges they face for the future." The body of the Howard regime is now cold and the affairs of the Australian nation are the responsibility of the Rudd Government. There is no doubting that when Rudd was elected, the nation shifted...

Paul Toohey's Last Drinks

Sarah Burnside
The anthropologist Peter Sutton has noted that "Indigenous issues have a habit of storming into public consciousness periodically and then storming out again". The last several years have seen Australia experience a sustained period of turbulence in that regard...

Censorship and Cultural Judgment

Bryn Dodson
A year ago it would have surprised almost everyone to learn that in 2008, police would raid an art gallery and confiscate works by one of Australia’s most eminent artists and photographers, on suspicion that those works were child pornography. The passionate discussion of censorship that followed the confiscation of Bill Henson's photographs, in newspapers, on talkback radio, and even in a public meeting assembled specially for the purpose, would all have been equally unexpected...

Boom: Mining, photography, landscape and the city

Philip Goldswain
For over twenty years Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky has investigated what he calls the 'manufactured landscapes' of mines, quarries and oil fields that result from the commodification of the natural environment. The documentation of these 'residual landscapes' created as a by-product of mining has been accompanied by the recording of rail cuts, shipyards and pipelines, the industrial infrastructure that allows the movement of these extracted materials...

Towards a Convention for Persons Displaced by Climate Change: Key Issues and Preliminary Responses

David Hodgkinson, Tess Burton, Simon Dawkins, Lucy Young and Alex Coram
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Stern Review, among many others, warn that the effects of climate change – including rising sea levels, heavier floods, more frequent and severe storms, and drought – will cause large-scale human displacement. Although precise figures cannot be known, Myers estimates that, by 2050, as many as 200 million people, or one in every forty-five,could be overtaken by such events...

Australian Multiculturalism Reframed

Laksiri Jayasuriya
One of the notable features of the new political régime in Canberra has been its unwillingness to engage with immigration policy issues relating to recruitment or settlement. This reticence, clearly apparent in the Agenda of the 2020 Summit, is baffling considering that the scarcity of labour, in particular, the heightened demand for skilled labour, remains a serious constraint on a rapidly expanding economy...

Once Were Warriors: Wilfred Burchett, Robert Manne and the Forgotten History War

Jamie Miller
In July 2008, with little warning, a bitter historical controversy broke out in response to Robert Manne’s Monthly article ‘Agent of Influence: Reassessing Wilfred Burchett’. A group of academics attacked him in caustic terms for nothing less than intellectual dishonesty; Manne responded by accusing them of lying. Onlookers could have been excused for wondering what had sparked such open and personal animosity...

The Forgotten Australians: Identity, records and their search for the past

Andrew Murray
This address was given as the keynote speech at The Fourth International Conference on the History of Records and Archives, organised in conjunction with the Institute of Advanced Studies, at The University of Western Australia...

Creating a Vision for the Arts and Cultural Sectors in our Capital City

Margaret Seares
During 2007 some members of the arts sector met with the Chief Executive of Lotterywest to discuss the potential to build momentum in the arts in WA. Those discussions were swirling around at the same time as the Committee for Perth had identified the enhancement of Perth’s cultural fabric as a key strategy in the Committee’s role of improving the liveability of Perth...