David Walker

Legacies of White Australia: Race, culture and nation edited by Laksiri Jayasuriya, David Walker and Jan Gothard

October 2003, no. 255

When the MV Tampa entered Australian waters in 2001, the ensuing row over its 433 Afghan passengers ignited renewed debate about immigration, citizenship and national identity. The Howard government’s subsequent re-election on a platform of border protection and security coincided with the centenary of the first substantial legislation passed by the newly constituted Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia. The Immigration Restriction Act (1901) was the centrepiece of the White Australia Policy and reflected the new nation’s desire to regulate the composition of its population and culture, free from British interference. This collection of essays, authored by some of the country’s foremost academics in law, history and politics, commemorates that anniversary. It is a timely publication, and demanding in its persistent consideration of what the Australian national project has been and what it could be in the twenty-first century.

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From Another Place: Migration and the politics of culture by Gillian Bottomley

by David Walker •

December 1992, no. 147

David Walker reviews 'From Another Place: Migration and the politics of culture' by Gillian Bottomley

The title of Gillian Bottomley’s lively study addresses both the major theme of migration and her own position as an academic anthropologist. Bottomley targets specialist studies with hard and fast disciplinary categories and attitudes and rejects the tone of impersonal scholarship which such works frequently adopt.

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Australia’s Asia: From Yellow Peril to Asian Century edited by David Walker and Agnieszka Sobocinska

by Nick Hordern •

September 2013, no. 354

Nick Hordern reviews 'Australia’s Asia' edited by David Walker and Agnieszka Sobocinska

The launch last October of the Gillard government’s White Paper Australia in the Asian Century was quite a show; in Pakistan it would have been called a tamasha – to use the lovely Urdu word for a song and dance. A flock of officials, business figures, commentators, and consultants looked grave and prophetic as they preached the importance of Asia – as if it were a new idea (their own). But as the editors of Australia’s Asia point out in their introductory chapter, ‘we have been here before’. The significance of Asia to modern Australia has been clear ever since the first ship from Bengal arrived in the infant settlement of Sydney in 1791. And it is now increasingly clear that the effects of contact with Asia on Aboriginal Australia were also considerable. While the degree of Asia’s importance may have varied, the fact of that importance is a constant.

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Not Dark Yet: A Personal History by David Walker

by John Rickard •

April 2011, no. 330

It is perhaps not surprising that historians, as they edge towards retirement, should consider the possibility of reviewing their own life history. So, for example, among the generation of postwar historians, Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Bernard Smith added powerful stories to our stock of Australian childhoods, while W.K. Hancock and Manning Clark, managing two volumes apiece, focused more on the life trajectory and career path. Now, at a time when there appears to be a growing appetite for biography and memoir, one senses that another generation of historians might be sizing up the options.

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A foot in the Chinese door

by David Walker •

October 1994, no. 165

Those fortunate enough to hear Professor Liu Haiping speak on ‘Universities in a Changing China’ in Melbourne last month were given much food for thought. As Dean of the School of Foreign Studies at Nanjing University he has been at the centre of a period of rapid change in Chinese higher education.

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‘A brief history of the future’ by David Walker

by David Walker •

February–March 1994, no. 158

In October 1993 I picked up a copy of Window, the ‘Weekly Hong Kong Newsmagazine with Exclusive Coverage of China’ and found in the Business and Finance section a Profile, ‘Bob Hawke’s Eagle Eye in Asia’. There was a photograph of the Eagle, who described himself as a ‘business commentator and facilitator of increased enmeshment in Asia’. This was certainly a confident label. Reading on I discovered that Hawke saw himself as ‘overwhelmingly responsible for the vision of Australia as part of Asia’. He told the reporter than in his first days as Prime Minister he had used the phrase, ‘our future lies in enmeshment with Asia’, a sentiment that was at first greeted sceptically, but now, Hawke claimed, ‘no one questions the wisdom and correctness of Hawke’s vision. No one.’ Emphatic stuff, claiming sole credit for long term shifts in opinion and cultural practice, while dismissing the doubters. If that was all there was to my theme, this would be a very brief history indeed.

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Australian Cultural History, Volume 11: Books, Readers, Reading edited by David Walker, Julia Hornen and Martyn Lyons

by Sue Murray •

September 1992, no. 144

It is refreshing to find an approach to literature that largely avoids traditional methods of discourse. Books, Readers, Reading is a compilation of essays from an Australian Cultural History Conference held in June 1991 and it encompasses subjects as diverse as Bible reading, a history of Australia’s first paperbacks and circulating libraries.

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