Commentary

Located on Yawuru Country in Rubibi (Broome), Magabala Books is one of the most remote publishers in the world. This First Nations publishing house has helped redefine Australian publishing since the 1980s by continually ensuring that Aboriginal stories and voices are in print. Since its formal establishment in 1987 – following a landmark desert meeting in 1984 and with funding from the Australian Bicentenary Authority’s National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Program and the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Cultural Centre – Magabala has published more than 250 authors from across Australia. The press emerged in direct response to the widespread appropriation of Indigenous stories by Settler people and publishing houses and continues to define how publishing can best serve Aboriginal authors, artists, and illustrators.

The proposed abolition of the Australian National Dictionary Centre represents a significant retreat from the Australian National University’s long-standing commitment to supporting a national public culture. This should alarm all of us, not least the Australian taxpayer who contributes $220 million a year – received by no other Australian university – so that the ANU can conduct significant research ‘supporting the development of Australia’s national unity and identity, including by improving Australia’s understanding of itself and the history and culture of its Indigenous peoples, its Asia-Pacific neighbours, and its place in the international community’. 

Just after midnight on 6 August 1945, twelve United States military personnel on Tinian Island in the north-western Pacific Ocean had an early breakfast of eggs, sausages, and pineapple fritters. After prayers with a Lutheran chaplain, they boarded a Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber for a six-hour flight to Japan. Each carried a pistol, and their commander secretly carried a metal box holding twelve cyanide capsules, for use in case of capture. Their aircraft carried a nuclear bomb which would soon be dropped on Hiroshima, a city in the west of Honshu, Japan’s largest island. Accompanying them was a second bomber carrying instrumentation to measure the blast effects, and a third carrying photography equipment. Weather reconnaissance aircraft had departed earlier, to ensure conditions were suitable for the attack.

This week on the ABR Podcast we feature James Curran’s commentary ‘Balance sheet blues: The pros and cons of Pax Americana coming to an end’. Curran’s focus is the evolving relationship between Australia and America during and beyond Trump’s second administration. 

Remember when the Russians ‘liberated’ Berlin in 1945, ending World War II? The iconic image of a Soviet soldier raising the Soviet flag over the Reichstag became a staple of popular culture as well as historical memory. It was the culminating point of the wartime Alliance of the ‘Big Three’, with Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin hanging out together like old friends and deciding the fate of the world.

This week on the ABR Podcast, we feature Rebecca Strating’s commentary ‘“Rejecting the system it created”: How Trump’s America is reshaping Australia’s regional relations’. While the second Trump administration presents a challenge for Australian policy makers, it also provides an opportunity for Australia, explains Strating, ‘to develop greater self-reliance in foreign policy and deepen relationships across Asia’.

The first six months of the second Trump administration have left American allies worldwide, including Australia, in a state of shock and sullen resignation. Shock at the resumption of Trump’s global trade and tariff war, following threats to Canada, Greenland and Mexico, not to mention the harm being done to American institutions and soft power; resignation that US protectionism and the rising demands of Washington on allies to pay more for their own defence are here to stay.

Some readers will know me as the author of Romulus My Father (1998). Romulus is not a book of philosophy, but it was obviously written by a philosopher profoundly affected by painful events in his childhood and the influence on him of his father and his father’s dear friend Pantelimon Hora, who helped raise him. Many people who have read the book said that it is obvious why I became a philosopher.

For Australia, a nation that has long balanced its economic ties to Asia with its security alliance with the United States, the second Trump administration represents an unprecedented challenge to its foreign policy. The return of Donald Trump to the White House has ushered in a new era of economic nationalism that threatens to reshape the Asian security landscape. For the newly re-elected Albanese Labor government, this presents plenty of risks. But its decisive mandate also provides an opportunity for Australia to develop greater self-reliance in foreign policy and deepen relationships across Asia.

Last month’s remarkable federal election result has produced a metric plethora of articles explaining how it was achieved and what it means for the government, for the electorate, and for elections to come.