Australia, Asia and cultural anxiety : inaugural AHA Anniversary Public Lecture, given at the Grand Hotel, Mildura on 29 September (2003).

My theme tonight is the recurrent idea that Australia could be expected to have an Asian future. From the 1880s there developed a speculative literature around the notion that Asia ('generic Asia' as I prefer to call it) would exert an increasing influence, possibly a determining influence, on the development and settlement of the Australian continent. There is a certain pathos about this story of a young, newly formed community on the threshold of nationhood finding Asia blocking its path. Would the ensuing contest be the making of white Australia; would the young nation define its national purpose and assert its right to exist or would it succumb to a force more powerful? Would white Australia become nothing more than a faint historical memory, a failed experiment in the complex and uncertain business of nation building? In short, would white Australia fail?

Iraq anniversary : Interview with researcher Ahmed Hassin

A decade after the invasion of Iraq by US-led forces, we look at the role of Australia and local civil soceity in building the new nation.

Quo iure? Defendants' liability to rescuers in the tort of negligence

The year 2001 marks the 80th anniversary of Cardozo J's judgment in Wagner v International Railway Co 232 NY 176 (1921). This article examines theoretical and procedural problems associated with the concept of duty of care as a foundation for the defendant's liability in negligence to altruistic rescuers, and suggests that Cardozo J's judgment did not establish the principle that defendants owe rescuers a duty of care in negligence. It is argued that subsequent judgments failed to provide the duty of care owed to rescuers under tortious negligence with proper jurisprudential foundations. Conceptual difficulties inherent in a jurisprudential principle that would provide physically injured rescuers with a legal right to a duty of care from the defendant under the tort of negligence were compounded once compensation for negligently occasioned pure emotional distress became available. This article analyses various theories of recovery for pure psychiatric injury and the classification of rescuers into primary and secondary victims. It proposes a solution in the form of a separate cause of action on the case for liability to injured rescuers, partly based on the principle of necessity that governs the Roman action for negotiorum gestio. Cases from the United States, England and Australia are used to illustrate the similarities and differences in the development of and approaches to, the law of rescue.

Tea caddy

The tea caddy was a present from Alfred and his sister Catherine to their mother Sarah on her silver wedding anniversary on 18 October 1874.

Buchenwald ball

A celebratory story about a group of orphans from the holocaust who found their way to Australia and became a family. In 2006 they held the 60th anniversary Buchenwald Ball.

In the green zone : 40 years with Colonel Qaddafi

Colonel Muammar Qaddafi has been the leader of Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya since September 1969. After 40 years in control of his nation, Qaddafi is actually the world’s longest serving non‐monarchial head of state. This year’s anniversary makes it timely to review his four decades of rule. From being the leader of a successful military coup to being America’s bête noire of the 1980s and then the head of a much‐vilified rogue state under twenty‐seven years of UN sanctions, the mercurial Qaddafi has lately steered his nation to something of a rapprochement with the West, been elected to the chairmanship of the African Union and simultaneously had a very public falling out with some of his Arab leaders. This paper examines the highs and lows of Qaddafi’s leadership and where his small but prominent North African state may be heading.

From the barracks to the burrup : The National Trust in Western Australia

Published to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the National Trust in Western Australia, this beautifully designed book contains never-before-published images and draws from a new oral history archive with testimonies from many of the founders, staff and volunteers of the organisation. Heritage battles for the Barracks Arch, the Palace Hotel, the Swan River and the Swan Brewery are covered, as well as the integral role played by grassroots heritage groups. Relations between the Trust, developers and the State Government and changing practices of interpretation and conservation are also discussed. What emerges is not only a history of the National Trust in Western Australia but also the people that shaped it. It is also a history of the ways in which heritage has been understood and practised across Australia.--Publisher description

The trial of Albert Camus

The fiftieth anniversary of Camus’ death in 2010 was largely ignored in his native Algeria, reflecting the critical response to Camus’ writings that regards him as a colonialist writer and apologist for the French domination of his native Algeria. This critique also claims that Camus’ colonial attitudes are hidden and reinforced by a European attitude that sees him as dealing first and foremost with universal questions about the human predicament and existential isolation. However, Camus' journalism shows an Algerian closely identified with the destiny of all the peoples of Algeria, and his novel The Outsider contains sufficient indications that, whatever its existential importance, in the concrete situation of Camus’ Algeria the Arab has the precise status
of outsider.

Pakistan-China bilateral relations 2001-2011 : a deepening but cautious partnership

Last year (2011) marked the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Pakistan and China. The bilateral relationship has deepened significantly since 1951, with both countries benefiting from this relationship. However, Pakistan would like to deepen it even further, while China is more pragmatic and cautious. There are irritants, notably the killing of Chinese citizens, the presence of Uighur militants in Pakistan and their different interests in Afghanistan, which could put some stress on the relationship. While the relationship will continue to grow, China is not about to displace the US as Pakistan’s major economic and military aid provider.

A safety culture in construction business

Promoting safety management is always the top priority in construction business. Fostering safety culture will be one of the most effective ways. This paper is a case study, based upon the “Geller’s 10 principles for achieving a total safety culture”, to review how a construction companyin Hong Kong effectively promoting safety culture and enjoying pleasant safety records. Zero harmis not a “zero sum game”, but it requires positive “top down” and “bottom up” actions from both employers and employees.