Cirrus@Austlit

'We seem to be experiencing a shift to a more generalised accept - ance that human-induced climate change is real. In Australia, Liberals, and liberal-progressives, are suddenly standing against the Liberal Party on climate (and refugee) grounds; the required ‘balance’ of denialist voices in mainstream media reporting seems no longer necessary, perhaps impossible to entertain; the level of activism and some common acclimatisation to, if not embracing of ‘sustainable’ agendas is noticeably broadened, if not deepened. Has some threshold been crossed? Is the sense of an ending pushing us towards new possibilities?' (Editorial introduction)

'We seem to be on the brink of having a government that shares the assumptions of the alt-Right. Peter Dutton’s challenge to Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership (with Scott Morrison and Julie Bishop now also waiting in the wings) is the high point after weeks and months, and indeed years, of incitement by alt-Right media figures and of course lengthy destabilisation by Tony Abbott and his parliamentary supporters.'  (Editorial Introduction)

'Fifty years since May ’68, and the promise, as it was understood then, of freedom. From what, and to what? The unfettering of the imagination was one cry, the flowering of the social capacities of human being another. Here was the definitive opening to ‘make our own history’—to defy the experience of alienation that was now a condition of student life, not just that of the factory. It was a revolt, or revolution, that sought to defy the structures of the received political Left as much as it was a rejection of the structures and effects of (late) capitalism. At least, this was how it largely understood itself: a revolt against authority, a flowering of possibilities, the chance for individuals to become ‘whole’. It was believed that, starting in the ‘nerve centres’ of society— the universities—this completely novel form of revolt would flow out to destabilise the whole.' (Alison Caddick :‘To the Edge of Freedom’: May ’68 and Now' Editorial)

'‘Security’ is a multifarious notion. Its connotations bounce off in so many directions. Its implicit meanings and our anxiety about it bubble up from so many layers and recesses in our personal and social being. In the present context of nasty little wars around the globe and in the face of climate change, ‘security’ is now adumbrated in a new academic discipline—‘human security’; security is rapidly being technologised as ‘securitisation’ for states, like Israel and America, with unruly populaces; and everywhere there is a sense of ontological destabilisation—via, on the one hand, terror brought home to the West and, on the other, via capitalism’s own core engine of ‘creative destruction’, at the heart of ‘growth’ and ‘innovation’ and leading us who knows exactly where.'    (Editorial introduction)

'Once a month the Murdoch-owned Australian newspaper publishes a business-affairs supplement called The Deal. The May issue was dedicated to what it called ‘The New Agenda: Celebrating Indigenous Success’. Across forty-eight pages a series of short, upbeat, public relations–style reports spruiked Indigenous business ventures, start-ups and individual entrepreneurs. Sponsored by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and the Business Council of Australia, the magazine included some heavy promotion of the federal government’s Indigenous Procurement Policy as well as giving Andrew Forrest space to advance his own review of Indigenous jobs and training and the credentials of his Fortescue Metals Group. The Deal’s vision of a newly staked trajectory for Indigenous persons via individualised, capital-led transformation coincides with significant media attention given to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Mabo decision, the fiftieth anniversary of the 1967 referendum and the culmination of Indigenous people’s caucusing on constitutional recognition at Uluru in May 2017. The passing of another anniversary has however been strikingly absent from these liberal progressive media celebrations of policy success and Aboriginal ‘advancement’: the tenth anniversary of the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER; the Intervention).' (Editorial introduction)