Cirrus@Austlit

'Karen Fox begins her fine study of Australia’s honours system with an account of Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s controversial decision in March 2014 to return damehoods and knighthoods to the Order of Australia and the even more contentious selection of Prince Philip in January 2015 as one of the new knights. Fox argues that these events revived what she describes as ‘an important and ongoing debate in Australia’s national life’ (2) on how the honours system should express the nation.' (Introduction)

'Clio’s Lives is a most welcome and highly readable addition to scholarly literature on autobiography and biography. Inspired by ‘the increasing though still-limited body of scholarship connecting the writing of history directly with the lives of those who write it’ (1), it is based on a workshop held in Canberra during 2015. Part of the ANU Lives Series in Biography, the book brings together contributions from 13 highly regarded authors. Eleven of them are associated with Australian universities and two with Canadian universities. They discuss a quite wide variety of historians. Following the editors’ introduction, the four sections focus on historians’ autobiographies, historians who have defined their nation, those who have defined their discipline and collective biography of historians. Barbara Caine provides concluding reflections. Autobiography and biography are linked with intellectual and social developments. Clio’s Lives not only presents the results of its contributors’ research but also illuminates significant historiographical issues.'  (Introduction)

The Gurindji people of the Northern Territory’s southern Victoria River District are well known because of their 1966 walk-off from Wave Hill Station that led to equal wages in the pastoral industry and federal land rights legislation. Their history before the walk-off, however, has received less attention and is the subject of this impressive book. Yijarni, the Gurindji word for true stories from the period following the Dreamtime, brings together a wide variety of accounts dealing with that history.

'This book is about David Carment's experiences as an historian in and of Australia's Northern Territory.' (Publication summary)

'The main purpose of this thesis is to present the career of Sir Littleton Groom in terms of his being a representative liberal of his generation and, at the same time, a significant force in Australian politics. Born in Toowoomba in 1867, his background and education led to his becoming after 1901 a forceful federal parliamentarian on the radical wing of the protectionist party. Between 1905 and 1908, first as Minister for Home Affairs, and then as Attorney-General, he tried to foster federal sentiment through the expansion of the Commonwealth powers. The 1909 fusion of non-Labor parties presented him with a dilemma but he supported it on the grounds that otherwise his party and its principles faced extinction. As Minister for External Affairs until April 1910, however, he had greater difficulties with many of his new colleagues than with the Labor opposition. Yet he still attacked Fisher's subsequent Labor administration as class-biased and irresponsible. Minister for Trade and Customs in Cook's short-lived government of 1913-14, he largely devoted himself to reversing Labor policies but was still occasionally able to exhibit his old disregard for parochial state interests. After the outbreak of war in 1914 he constantly stressed the moral righteousness of the British Empire's cause, with which he equated that of Australian nationalism. As Minister for Works and Railways between 1918 and 1921 Te aligned himself with those who saw the need for some social reform combined with increased government participation in the country's economic development. He was appointed Attorney-General again in December 1921. In this post he reformed aspects of the Commonwealth public service, tried to further extend federal commercial and industrial powers and to deport those whom, he believed, carried foreign disruptive ideas into the country. As leader of the Australian delegation to the 1924 League of Nations Assembly he unsuccessfully advocated the adoption of a new scheme for international arbitration. In 1925 Prime Minister Bruce, dissatisfied with Groom's performance as Attorney-General, forced his resignation. Groom retaliated in 1929 when as Speaker of the House of Representatives he refused to vote to save the government in a crucial division. His commitment to federal arbitration, the issue in question, and his concern about the "dignity of the chair" were the main reasons for his decision. He was defeated in the subsequent election but returned as an independent in 1931. He spent much of the remainder of his life in seeking to make his fellow Australians more aware of the valuable work done by the federal pioneers in the Commonwealth's first decade. Despite the numerous tributes paid to him immediately after his death in 1936, since then he has been largely ignored. His reputation deserved a better fate both because he left such a solid legacy behind, and, more notably, his career reflected the shifts in the politics of his time as they affected a man whose basic beliefs remained largely unchanged.' (Thesis description)