Former Archbishop of York ‘covered up’ sex abuse scandal

The former Archbishop of York stood accused last night of covering up allegations that a senior Church of England clergyman had abused choirboys and school pupils. Lord Hope of Thornes was made aware of the accusations against the Very Rev Robert Waddington, a former Dean of Manchester Cathedral and once the cleric in overall charge of Church schools, in 1999 and again in 2003. Waddington was stripped of his right to conduct church services but the archbishop did not report concerns about alleged past abuse or a potential continuing threat to children to police or child protection agencies. The extent of Waddington’s alleged history of abuse and the Church’s inaction has been revealed through a joint investigation by The Times and The Australian newspaper in Sydney.

Indigenous Australian women and work : an historical context

The aim of this on-going research is to interrogate the era of colonialism in Australia (1896-1966) and the denial of paid employment of Aboriginal women. The 1897 Aborigines Protection and the Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act witnessed thousands of Aboriginal people placed on Government run reserves and missions. This resulted in all aspects of their lives being controlled through state mechanisms. Under various Acts of Parliament, Aboriginal women were sent to privately owned properties to be utilised as ‘domestic servants’ through a system of forced indentured labour, which continued until the 1970’s. This paper discusses the hidden histories of these women through the use of primary sources documents including records from the Australian Department of Native Affairs and Department of Home and Health. This social history research reveals that the practice of removing Aboriginal women from their families at the age of 12 or 13 and to white families was more common practice than not. These women were often: not paid, worked up to 15 hour days, not allowed leave and subjected to many forms of abuse. Wages that were meant to be paid were re-directed to other others, including the Government. Whilst the retrieval of these ‘stolen wages’ is now an on-going issue resulting in the Queensland Government in 2002 offering AUS $2,000 to $4,000 in compensation for a lifetime of work, Aboriginal women were also asked to waive their legal right to further compensation. There are few documented histories of these Aboriginal women as told through the archives. This hidden Aboriginal Australian women’s history needs to be revealed to better understand the experiences and depth of misappropriation of Aboriginal women as domestic workers. In doing so, it also reveals a more accurate reflection of women’s work in Australia.

How do Australian print media representations of child abuse and neglect inform the public and system reform?

The print media play a vital role in informing the public about child abuse and neglect. This information helps build broad support for laws and system developments that enable the state to intervene into private family lives and ensure that children are protected from maltreatment. Print media coverage usually sets the daily media agenda. It therefore influences public understandings of child abuse and neglect and what people believe should be done about it. Media impact on policy agendas should not be underestimated. This article outlines the results of a study of all major Australian newspaper stories covering abuse and neglect matters during an 18-month period in 2008–2009. A range of issues are identified concerning how well these stories inform the public about the nature of the problem and the current national reform agenda for protective systems that promotes early intervention and prevention...

Crossing lines: Sport history, transformative narratives, and Aboriginal Australia

In this collaborative article, we seek to unsettle the dominance of Western, reconstructionist accounts of Indigenous Australian sport history through reflections on our past research in the Queensland Aboriginal community of Cherbourg. That research focussed on a statue of legendary 1930s cricketer, Eddie Gilbert, and on sport exhibitions in Cherbourg's Ration Shed Museum. Here, we are less concerned with unveiling the ‘true’ account of Australian Aboriginal sporting history, or even a ‘true’ Indigenous representation of events. Rather, we are interested in analysing various perspectives in order to generate a more inclusive and complete account of Aboriginal sport history and the narrative implications of these for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. Central to this endeavour is the positioning of Indigenous knowledge and understanding at the centre of history-making. The article is in two sections: reflections on our past work from the perspectives of the researchers themselves and an Aboriginal academic colleague, followed by a discussion of how those experiences and reflections will inform our pending project on the 1950s and 1960s Cherbourg marching girls teams.

Disciplining the screen through education: The Royal Commission into the moving picture industry in Australia

In this article, we investigate the complex relationship between concerns about children and young people’s exposure to cinema in 1920s Australia and the use of film in education. In part, the Royal Commission into the Moving Picture Industry in Australia aimed to ‘ascertain the effect and the extent of the power of film upon juveniles’ and Commissioners spoke to educationalists, psychologists, medical professions, police officers and parents to gain insight into the impacts of movies on children. Numerous issues were canvassed in the Commission hearings such as exposure to sexual content, ‘excesses’ in film content, children’s inability to concentrate at school following cinema attendance and the influence of cinema on youth crime. While the Commission ultimately suggested it was parents’ role to police children’s engagements with cinema, it did make recommendations for restricting children’s access to films with inappropriate themes. Meanwhile, the Commission was very positive about film’s educational role stating that ‘the advantage to be gained by the use of the cinematograph as an adjunct to educational methods should be assisted in every possible way by the Commonwealth’. We draw on the Commission’s minutes of evidence, the Commission report and newspaper articles form the 1920s to the 1940s to argue that the Commission provides valuable insight into the beginnings of the use of screen content in formal schooling, both as a resource across the curriculum and as a specific focus of education through film appreciation and, later, broader forms of media education. The article argues debates about screen entertainment and education rehearsed in the Commission are reflected today as parents, concerned citizens and educators ponder the dangers and potential of new media technologies and media content used by children and young people such as video games, social media and interactive content.

Book Review "Selling sex: a hidden history of prostitution", R. Frances, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2007

In the opening pages of Selling Sex we are introduced to 'Joy', a statue of a young female sex worker which stood in East Sydney for eighteen months during 1995- 1997. Following complaints by local residents, the statue was removed from public view and returned to its owner. Evidently, Joy was considered a reminder of the community's 'bad old days', when it was better known for prostitution than restaurants. In a nation in which almost every sizable community has proudly erected monuments to military men, the removal of Joy reveals much about labour and gender relations in Australia. For Frances, the removal of Joy is symbolic, our historical treatment of sex workers having parallels with our treatment of the convicts. This work sets out to give these women (male prostitutes do not figure in this history) a voice and break with the stereotypes of 'abandoned whores' or 'sad victims'. It also sets out to place the sex industry in the broader national and international context in which it has historically operated...

At the limits : postcolonial and hyperreal translations of Australian poetry

This dissertation employs the methodologies of postcolonial theory and hyperreal theory (following Baudrillard), in order to investigate articulations of identity, nation and representation in contemporary Australian poetry. Informed by a comparative analysis of contemporary Latin American poetry and cultural theory (in translation), as a means of re-examining the Australian context, this dissertation develops a new transnational model of Australian poetics. The central thesis of this dissertation is that contemporary Australian poetry engages with the postcolonial at its limits. That is, at those sites of postcoloniality that are already mapped by theory, but also at those that occur beyond postcolonial theory. The hyperreal is understood as one such limit, traceable within the poetry but silenced in conventional postcolonial theory. As another limit to the postcolonial, this dissertation reads Latin American poetry and theory, in whose texts postcolonial theory is actively resisted, but where postcolonial and hyperreal poetics nevertheless intersect. The original critical context constructed by this dissertation enables a new set of readings of Australian identity through its poetry. Within this new interpretative context, the readings of contemporary Australian poetry articulate a psycho-social postcoloniality; offer a template for future transactions between national poetry and global politics; and develop a model of the postcolonial hyperreal.

Born of fire, possessed by darkness : mysticism and Australian poetry

This dissertation is structured around five Australian mystical poets: Ada Cambridge, John Shaw Neilson, Francis Webb, Judith Wright and Kevin Hart. It examines the varieties of Western Christian mysticism upon which these poets draw, or with which they exhibit affinities. A short prelude section to each chapter considers the thematic parallels of their contemporaries, while the final chapter critically investigates constructions of Indigeneity in Australian mystical poetry and the renegotiated mystical poetics of Indigenous poets and theologians. The central argument of this dissertation is that an understanding of Western Christian mysticism is essential to the study of Australian poetry. There are three sub-arguments: firstly, that Australian literary criticism regarding the mystical largely avoids the concept of mysticism as a shifting notion both historically and in the present; secondly, that what passes for mysticism is recurringly subject to poorly defined constructions of mysticism as well as individual poets’ use of the mystical for personal, creative or ideological purposes; thirdly, that in avoiding the concept of a shifting notion critics have ignored the increasing contribution of Australian poets to national and international discourses of mysticism.

Transformations : landscape in recent Australian fiction / Gillian Mary Tyas

Focusing on novels written since 1980 by Australian authors Rodney Hall, Liam Davison, Tim Winton, Elizabeth Jolley and Gerald Murnane, and engaging with responses to the land by visual and performing artists, this thesis explores the idea that the writer and artist are mediators in the multitude of experiences that constitutes landscape.

Teaching and learning history in primary schools : pedagogical shifts, complexities and opportunities

From 2011 the teaching and learning of History will be expanded into all primary schools (Kindergarten – Year 6) throughout Australia under a National Curriculum, including the formal preschool/kindergarten year. History as one of four core subjects will replace current studies of society and environment curriculum taught in primary schools across. The curriculum implementation process will involve a cultural and pedagogical shift as primary teachers make adjustments to the discipline of History. This article begins with an outline of the current curriculum context. An analysis of the New South Wales Human Society and Its Environment and the Australian Curriculum: History Draft Consultation documents follows. The findings indicate that the History Draft Consultation lacks clear guidance for teachers and has a number of shortcomings compared to the NSW HSIE syllabus. There are opportunities, however, for primary teachers because of the broad similarities of content knowledge in both documents and the embedded historical concepts in the NSW syllabus document.