Kevin Rudd and harmony

At a major speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC on March 31, 2008, Rudd indicated a new direction in Australian foreign policy concerning China. He focused on the concept of 'harmony', recognizing the key importance of China's role in a 'harmonious World 'as a' responsible stakeholder. '
Rudd declared that he looked to China's taking a vital role in the World 'in strengthening the global and regional rule-based order'. He has also highlighted the importance of treating China as a friend with much common ground but with whom honest, straight talk was a vital factor in the relationship.
I want to explore and explain the development and significance of Rudd's new approach to the concept of harmony and rule based order. I want to suggest that Rudd has pioneered a new direction in Australia's policies toward China. Rudd focuses on the ancient and developing concept of harmony into a rule-based order that is necessary to building a harmonious world.

Green planning heritage/industrial nature : the park lands or 'regeneration reserves' of Broken Hill

Freestone (1989+) has extensively surveyed town planning visions and model communities for Australia, but one settlement has been forgotten. The significant mining settlement of Broken Hill in far western New South Wales does not figure in his thematic and historical analyses yet its park lands are so integral to its physical cultural legacy and human health that it warrants enhanced standing. In the last 2 years the Commonwealth has been considering the potential nomination of the municipality of Broken Hill for inclusion onto the National Heritage List principally due to its mining, social and economic contributions to Australia’s heritage and identity. A component in their deliberations is the Park Lands, or ‘Regeneration Reserves’, that encompass this urban settlement and its mine leaseholds. Within these Regeneration Reserves, international arid zone ecological restoration theory and practice was pioneered by Albert and Margaret Morris in the 1930s that serves as the method for all mining revegetation practice in Australia today. This paper reviews the theory and evolution of the Broken Hill Regeneration Reserves, having regard to the Adelaide Park Lands and Garden City discourses of the 1920s-30s, arguing that the Broken Hill Regeneration Reserves have a valid and instrumental position in the planning and landscape architectural histories of Australia.

Whither Australian Hill-Station creation : re-writing Adelaide Hills narratives about the architectural imperatives that crafted their establishment

This paper explores the historiography of the Adelaide Hills and offers a new perspective as to the reasons behind hill-station residence constructions that crafted this distinct cultural and designed landscape. Australian hill-station communities, and their major architectural edifices, were extensively established in two periods: the 1870s-1890s and the 1920s-1930s. Sites in the Darling Ranges, Adelaide Hills, Macedon and Dandenong Ranges, Blue Mountains and the Tamborine Mountains were favoured summer retreats for both the new and established wealthy families, who erected grand residences that have come to be celebrated in recent heritage assessments, and architectural and social histories of these environments. The majority of these studies and discourses have echoed an agenda that celebrates the architectural significance and personal associations of these structures, and thereupon have made a range of assumptions about the societal rationale for their establishment, construction and associated landscape plantings.

Taking examples from the Adelaide Hills, this paper argues that both architectural and social historians have ‘mistakenly’ concluded that the rationale behind these hill-station residences was based primarily on the provision of a ‘pleasant’ summer that echo the British Raj hill-stations. Further, it is argued that this conclusion constitutes a myth, or fabulation, about South Australian (SA) design, heritage and social histories, as many of these owners consciously sought out and selected hill-station allotments on the basis of their horticultural properties and possibilities, and that house-siting and construction were actually subservient to these imperatives.

ICON: response[s] to Tower Hill

A solo exhibition of paintings and mixed media artworks based on Tower Hill, an extinct volcanic site located near to Warrnambool.  

Hillary, Kevin and Julia; Margery, Rumwold and Jeff

Review of Liquid Nitrogen by Jennifer Maiden and The Odour of Sanctity by Amy Brown

Serious play: the art of Kevin Mortensen

Kevin Mortensen came to prominence in Australia and internationally as an early and highly regarded practitioner of performance art. He represented Australia at an early Venice Biennale and was a major figure in the Mildura Sculpture Triennials, which helped establish contemporary sculpture in this country in the 1960s and 1970s after a long period in which the art form languished. The new sculpture of this time was strongly related to American performance art, Happenings and Earth Art, and in Australia took on environmental concerns and facets of Australia's landscape, flora and fauna. Mortensen's art is highly environmental. More recently Mortensen has practised as a sculptor and also made prints and drawings. He was Head of Sculpture at RMIT University in the 1980s and early 1990s but, today almost a recluse, continues to exhibit new work at Australian Galleries in Melbourne and Sydney. Author Rob Haysom provides a beautifully written and researched account of Mortensen's entire career and the book is lavishly illustrated.

No prospect of release: Kevin Crump and the human rights implications of life imprisonment

A NSW court last week dismissed Kevin Crump’s latest appeal against his natural life sentence. Crump, who has served nearly 42 years in prison for murder, has been formally denied any prospect of a meaningful life outside prison walls.

The decision provides a timely opportunity to reconsider the viability of terms of life without parole. It further entrenches the use of terms of life without parole in Australia despite moves overseas to restrict – and in some cases eradicate – them.

Evolution and significance of the regeneration reserve heritage landscape of Broken Hill: history, values and significance

In 1991, the National Trust of NSW classified the Regeneration Reserves surrounding the City of Broken Hill as an essential cultural heritage asset of the City of Broken Hill, and in 2015 the City of Broken Hill, including the reserves, were elevated to the National Heritage List under the Commonwealth's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. This tract of land, and its proponents, Albert and Margaret Morris, are recognised as pioneers of arid zone revegetation science in Australia; a point noted in the National Heritage List citation. They created at Broken Hill a unique revegetation ‘greenbelt’ of national ecological, landscape architectural and town planning significance. The Morris’ led the advancement of arid zone botanical investigation and taxonomic inquiry, propagation innovation, and revegetation sciencein the 1920s-40s in Australia and applied this spatially. Their research and practical applications, in crafting the regeneration reserves around Broken Hill, demonstrated the need for landscape harmonisation to occur to reduce erosion and dust damage to human and mining activities alike. This pioneering research and practice informs and underpins much arid zone mine reclamation and revegetation work in Australia today. This paper reviews the historical evolution of this cultural landscape, its integral importance to the cultural heritage and mining history of the City of Broken Hill, and its inclusion as part of the Broken Hill National Heritage List citation.