The architect of the Republic of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew died on 23 March 2015, in the fiftieth year of the island nation’s independence. Yvonne Perkins recently interviewed Associate Professor Kevin Blackburn, an historian who has been working in Singapore for over twenty years. Her post reveals how history is evolving in the state over … Read more
One of my day jobs is teaching plain English to public servants. I encourage them to embrace accuracy, brevity and clarity and therefore to abandon tautologies. I’ve given up suggesting that you can’t have a new initiative and that, if you have to voice an opinion in government writing, it does not have to be personal. … Read more
Bruce Baskerville, Chair of the PHA NSW & ACT reflects… As public historians I often think we are not particularly aware of our own history. The professional historian, in the sense of the historian who could earn a living from their vocation, only really came into being in the later 19th century with the creation … Read more
On the eve of Gough Whitlam’s memorial service, Guy Betts reminds us of Whitlam’s respect for the historical perspective. One of the treasures of the Whitlam Institute’s collection is a remarkable series of school reports. These school reports comment on Gough Whitlam’s character and his intellectual development from the age of seven. In them, we … Read more
PHA member and librarian, Diana Wyndham, alerts us to the continuing threats to libraries, recalling that protests helped to reduce the cutbacks which were initially planned for Sydney’s Mitchell Library and which now threaten the staff and books at Sydney University’s Fisher Library. David Malouf and Bob Ellis spoke at a rally in front of Fisher on … Read more
Last August, Tony Abbott said at the launch of an exhibition at the National Museum of Australia: ‘Australians are encouraged to reflect on our remarkable history and contribute to the selection of the 100 moments that have defined Australia’. The Prime Minister used the passive voice, leaving unanswered the question ‘by whom’? It’s not … Read more
The year 2014 represents the 50-year anniversary of the Committee on the Future of Tertiary Education report. The Martin Report[i] led to the introduction of the binary policy of tertiary education in Australia, made up of universities and colleges of advanced education. Francesca Beddie looked back at the binary system and its replacement by … Read more
Nathan Stormont, winner of the 2013 Public History Prize, puts the Ukrainian political crisis into historical perspective… On a chilly evening in late November, 2013, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians converged on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti—the Independence Square—in the centre of Kyiv to protest the unpopular regime of Viktor Yanukovych. In the wake of a rejected … Read more
Christine Yeats reports on the Royal Australian Historical Society’s June Day Lecture by Dick Whitaker, Chief Meteorologist with Sky News Weather in Australia. In his lecture, ‘Of Droughts and Flooding Rains – rainfall variability in Australia and its effect on our history’, Dick discussed the impact of Australia’s often extreme weather patterns on our history. … Read more
As we approach Anzac Day in the centenary year of the beginning of the First World War, we are sure to see outpourings of reminiscence and myth about the ‘Great’ War. Francesca Beddie brings to the attention of fellow historians some of the efforts being made to encourage balance and honesty in the history being … Read more