Working Papers
The working papers collection comprises historical papers as well as current ideas and works in progress on some of the major issues and topics of our times.
This paper has been written to record over 40 years of Aboriginal art at Shoalhaven High School which in turn is a record of the progress of Aboriginal education in NSW since the creation of the Aboriginal Education Unit in 1973. It documents some of the artworks in the school but there is much more to record, hopefully these pages will inspire more oral and written history to emerge.
There is a vacuum in Australia because there has never been a satisfactory Head of State that represents the best interests and values of Australians. This is not just a symbolic or cultural failure. It is a practical failure that has consequences for the productivity and quality of life of the nation. Australia is over governed. The original colonies with their own government processes overlap and duplicate each other. It is impossible to reign them back with the current mindset of Federalism. There is no central means of rationalising many spheres of government nor is there a way to determine what areas are best suited to State and local governance. All this must change.
The greatest civilization will find a way to look outside itself and recognize in difference something that improves the world mind, the world capacity. Sadly that is not Australia.
"Do you approve amending the Constitution to establish the Australian Executive Council, comprising the Prime Minister and state and territory Premiers, as Australia’s head of state, replacing the Governor-General and State governors?"
Before the 2025 election A. Albanese sent Doechii's "Anxiety" to every member of his caucus.
In a world in which Doechii’s "Anxiety" is on JJJs high rotation list, where Trump/Vance, Putin. Xi, Netanyahu and right wing populism threaten to wreck the world as we know it, Peter Dutton and David Littleproud are unelectable.
Each historical era throws up its heroes and villains. Certainly Alexander Berry is a fallen angel moving from hero and rescuer of the survivors of the Boyd, innovative pioneer and trader to ruthless patriarch to Australian Frankenstein/grave robber and vicious environmental vandal.
Jeffrey Sachs and I were in Moscow in 1990. Sachs recent full blown speech to the European Parliament caused me to reflect on that time, the opportunities lost and the lingering tragedy and unprincipled opportunism that often underlies foreign policy.
The etymology of "Jerry Bailey"/Shoalhaven Heads and the Tragedy of Thom Davidson
